UV laser regulation of surface oxygen vacancy of CoFe2O4 for enhanced oxygen evolution reaction.

Oxygen evolution reaction is one of the key processes in the promising renewable energy technique of electrocatalytic water splitting. Developing high efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts requires determination of the optimal values of the descriptor parameters. Using spinel CoFe₂O₄ as the model catalyst, this work demonstrates that irradiation with pulsed UV laser can control the quantity of surface oxygen vacancy and thus modify the OER activity, in a volcano-shape evolution trend. This strategy sheds light on quantitatively investigation of the relationship between surface cation valence, anion vacancy, and physicochemical properties of transition-metal-based compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]