Selenium‐Modulated Ir–O–V Interface for Adaptive Surface Reconstruction Toward Favorable Water Electrolysis

Abstract Interfacial coupling has emerged as a transformative approach to enhance catalytic activity and stability for water electrolysis. It has been well recognized that most catalysts will suffer interfacial reconstruction generally accompanied by structural variety during electrocatalysis, however, these reconstruction processes are often restricted by the complexity of catalytic reactions. An ideal versatile catalyst for the potential utilization of multiply reactions should possess the flexible interfacial coupling effects and adaptive reconstruction capability, which remains a major challenge for metal‐support catalysts. This work designs a Ir–O–V interface by incorporating the Ir sites onto the mixed‐valence oxide support, for inducing strong and flexible interfacial coupling effects. It is demonstrated that the Ir–O–V interface in the presence of Se dopant manifests an adaptive surface reconstruction toward efficient water electrolysis. Specifically, the Ir sites are reduced with the formation of a dendrite‐like aggregation state during HER while these are oxidized with the emergence of a dense‐particle aggregation state during OER. As a result, the operation voltages for water electrolysis are 1.515 V in alkaline solution and 1.469 V in seawater at 85 °C. This study aims to the adaptive surface reconstruction mechanisms offer some insights on efficient catalysts toward sustainable hydrogen production.