Corrosion engineering on AlCoCrFeNi HEAs towards highly efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution of alkaline seawater

Seawater splitting is a prospective approach to yield renewable and sustainable hydrogen energy. Currently, complex preparation process and poor repeatability are generally considered to be an insuperable impediment to promote the large-scale production and application of electrocatalysts. Corrosion engineering, avoiding use of the intricate instruments, is an intriguing strategy to reduce the cost and present great potential for electrodes with catalytic performance. In this work, we propose an anode consisting of quinary AlCoCrFeNi layered double hydroxides uniformly decorated on AlCoCrFeNi high entropy alloy via a one-step corrosion engineering method, which directly serves as an extremely active catalyst for boosting oxygen evolution reaction in alkaline seawater. Notably, the best-performing catalyst exhibit the OER activity with overpotential values of 272.3 mV and 332 mV to achieve the current densities of 10 mA cm^-2 and 100 mA cm^-2, respectively. Deeply, the failure mechanism of obtained catalyst was found for advancing the development of multi-component catalyst.