Suppressing catalyst reconstruction in neutral electrolyte: stabilizing Co-O-Mo point-to-point connection of cobalt molybdate by tungsten doping for oxygen evolution reaction

Neutral oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a crucial half-reaction for electrocatalytic chemical production under mild condition, but with limited development due to low activity and poor stability. Herein, a tungsten-doped cobalt molybdate (WDCMO) catalyst was synthesized for efficient and durable OER under neutral electrolyte. It is demonstrated that catalyst reconstruction is suppressed by W doping, which stabilizes the Co-O-Mo point-to-point connection in CoMoO₄ architecture and stimulates to a lower valence state of active sites over the surface phase. Thereby, the surface structure maintains to avoid compound dissolution caused by over-oxidation during OER. Meanwhile, the WDCMO catalyst promotes charge transfer and optimizes *OH intermediate adsorption, which improves reaction kinetics and intrinsic activity. Consequently, the WDCMO electrode exhibits an overpotential of 302 mV at 10 mA cm^–2 in neutral electrolyte with an improvement of 182 mV compared with CoMoO₄ electrode. Furthermore, W doping significantly improves the electrode stability from 50 h to more than 320 h, with a suppressive potential attenuation from 2.82 to 0.29 mV h^–1. This work will shed new light on designing rational electrocatalysts for neutral OER.