Transforming Damage into Benefit: Corrosion Engineering Enabled Electrocatalysts for Water Splitting

Producing high-purity hydrogen from water electrocatalysis is essential for the flourishing hydrogen energy economy. It is of critical importance to develop low-cost yet efficient electrocatalysts to overcome the high activation barriers during water electrocatalysis. Among the various approaches of catalyst preparation, corrosion engineering that employs the autogenous corrosion reactions to achieve electrocatalysts has emerged as a burgeoning strategy over the past few years. Benefiting from the advantages of simple synthesis, effective regulation, easy scale-up production, and extremely low cost, corrosion engineering converts the harmful corrosion process into the useful catalyst preparation, achieving the goal of "transforming damage into benefit." Herein, the concept of corrosion engineering, fundamental reaction mechanisms, and affecting factors are firstly introduced. Then, recent progresses on corrosion engineering for fabricating electrocatalysts toward water splitting are summarized and discussed. Specific attentions are devoted to the formation mechanisms, catalytic performances, and structure-activity relations of these catalysts as well as the approaches employed for performance improvements. At last, the current challenges and future exploiting directions are proposed for achieving highly active and durable electrocatalysts. It is envisioned to shed light on the multidisciplinary corrosion engineering that is closely associated with corrosion and material science for energy and environmental applications.