Water Oxidation Catalysts: The Quest for New Oxide-Based Materials

The expected shortage of fossil fuels as well as the accompanying climate change are among the major challenges of the 21st century. A global shift to a sustainable energy landscape is, therefore, of utmost importance. Over the past few years, solar technologies have entered the energy market and have paved the way to replace fossil-based energy sources, in the long term. In particular, electrochemical solar-to-hydrogen technologies have attracted a lot of interest-not only in academia, but also in industry. Solar water splitting (artificial photosynthesis) is one of the most active areas in contemporary materials and catalysis research. The development of low-cost, efficient, and stable water oxidation catalysts (WOCs) remains crucial for artificial photosynthesis applications, because WOCs still represent a major economical and efficient bottleneck. In the following, we summarize recent advances in water oxidation catalysts development, with selected examples from 2016 onwards. This condensed survey demonstrates that the ongoing quest for new materials and informed catalyst design is a dynamic and rapidly developing research area.