Metal Organic Gel Derived Multi Metal Oxide as Effective Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Evolution Reaction.

Exploring efficient and durable catalysts from earth-abundant and cost-effective material is highly desirable for the sluggish anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Here, a series of multinary metal organic gels (MOGs) with various and alterable metal element compositions are prepared via straightforwardly mixing metal ions and ligand (4, 4', 4''-((1, 3, 5-triazine-2, 4, 6-triyl) tris (azanediyl)) tribenzoic acid, H3TATAB) solution at room temperature. Then, the derived spinel-type metal oxides with excellent electrocatalytic OER performance are obtained through calcining treatment of as-synthesized MOGs. Electrochemical testing results show that the trimetallic oxide CoFeNi-O-1 (derived from MOG with the molar ratio of total metal Co, Fe and Ni is 5:1:4) exhibits remarkable catalytic activity with a low overpotential 244 mV for current density of 10 mA cm-2 and a small Tafel slope 55.4 mV dec-1 in alkaline electrolyte, outperforming most of recently reported electrocatalysts. This work not only provided a promising OER catalyst and enrich the application of MOG in catalytic field, but also paved a new avenue to acquire multicomponent metal oxides with great electrocatalytic activity by a facile approach.