Recent Advances in Perovskite Oxides for Oxygen Evolution Reaction: Structures, Mechanisms, and Strategies for Performance Enhancement

Perovskite-type oxides are widely employed as oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts due to their tunable composition, diverse structure, abundant natural reserves, remarkable stability, and low cost. The intrinsic OER electrocatalytic activity of these perovskite oxides is generally enhanced by improving conductivity, increasing specific surface area, and optimizing the adsorption of oxygen-containing intermediates. This is achieved through rationally designed strategies, including compositional engineering, defect engineering, hybridization, and surface regulation. In this review, recent advances in perovskite oxides for OER are summarized, with a focus on exploring structure-performance relationships. This review provides a brief introduction to the application of perovskite oxides in OER, followed by the classification and characteristics of these perovskite oxides. The primary OER catalytic mechanisms, and well-established activity descriptors are discussed. The key strategies are concentrated for enhancing OER activity, including composition engineering, defect engineering, hybridization, and surface reconstruction. Finally, the challenges and opportunities in developing high-performance perovskite oxides as OER electrocatalysts are presented.