Dynamic Reconstruction of Ce-Doped Fe2P/NiCoP Hybrid for Ampere-Level Oxygen Evolution in Anion Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis

The sluggish kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) critically limit the efficiency of anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE). Herein, a Ce-doped bimetallic Fe₂P/NiCoP hybrid pre-catalyst that undergoes dynamic reconstruction to activate a highly efficient OER pathway is designed. The optimized Ce_0.1-Fe₂P/NiCoP exhibits an impressively low overpotential of 280 mV at 0.5 A cm⁻² and a small Tafel slope of 55.3 mV dec⁻¹ in a 1.0 M KOH. Remarkably, when integrated as the anode in an AEMWE electrolyzer, it delivers a low cell voltage of 1.812 V at 1.0 A cm⁻² and maintains stable performance for over 500 h at 60 °C. In situ characterizations and density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that Ce-doping enhances surface reconstruction and modulates the electronic structure, thereby reducing energy barriers for intermediates (ΔG_*OH and ΔG_*OOH) formation and accelerating OER kinetics. This work introduces a novel strategy to utilize catalyst reconstruction, advancing their applications in AEMWE systems.