The sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a pivotal process for renewable energy technologies, such as water splitting. The discovery of efficient, durable, and earth‐abundant electrocatalysts for water oxidation is highly desirable. Here, a novel trimetallic nitride compound grown on nickel foam (CoVFeN @ NF) is demonstrated, which is an ultra‐highly active OER electrocatalyst that outperforms the benchmark catalyst, RuO₂, and most of the state‐of‐the‐art 3D transition metals and their compounds. CoVFeN @ NF exhibits ultralow OER overpotentials of 212 and 264 mV at 10 and 100 mA cm⁻² in 1 m KOH, respectively, together with a small Tafel slop of 34.8 mV dec⁻¹. Structural characterization reveals that the excellent catalytic activity mainly originates from: 1) formation of oxyhydroxide species on the surface of the catalyst due to surface reconstruction and phase transition, 2) promoted oxygen evolution possibly activated by peroxo‐like (O₂²⁻) species through a combined lattice‐oxygen‐oxidation and adsorbate escape mechanism, 3) an optimized electronic structure and local coordination environment owing to the synergistic effect of the multimetal system, and 4) greatly accelerated electron transfer as a result of nitridation. This study provides a simple approach to rationally design cost‐efficient and highly catalytic multimetal compound systems as OER catalysts for electrochemical energy devices.

中文翻译：

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钒-钴-铁三金属氮化物的表面重构和相变以形成活性羟基氧化物以增强电催化水氧化

缓慢的氧气释放反应（OER）是可再生能源技术（如水分解）的关键过程。人们迫切希望找到一种高效，耐用且富含地球的水氧化电催化剂。此处展示了一种在泡沫镍（CoVFeN @ NF）上生长的新型三金属氮化物，它是一种超高活性OER电催化剂，其性能优于基准催化剂RuO ₂和大多数最新的3D过渡金属及其化合物。CoVFeN @ NF在1 m KOH中分别在10和100 mA cm ^-2时分别显示212和264 mV的超低OER过电势，以及34.8 mV dec ^-1的小Tafel斜率。结构表征表明，优异的催化活性主要来自：1）由于表面重构和相变而在催化剂表面形成羟基氧化物，2）促进了可能由过氧样（O ₂ ^2-）物种激活的氧气释放。通过晶格-氧-氧化和吸附物逸出机制的结合，3）由于多金属系统的协同作用而优化了电子结构和局部配位环境，以及4）由于氮化而大大加速了电子的转移。这项研究提供了一种简单的方法，可以合理设计具有成本效益的高催化多金属化合物系统，作为电化学能源设备的OER催化剂。