Anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) driven by intermittent renewable energy is one of the optimal solutions for producing green hydrogen gas; however, its further development is limited by highly active and long‐lived hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts. Herein, a cerium (Ce) incorporated amorphous NiP alloy grown on nickel foam is proposed to meet these challenges, which shows an industrial‐level current density of −1000 mA/cm 2 under 255 mV overpotential and maintains excellent stability under intermittent start‐shutdown operation for 10k cycles in 1 M KOH. The experimental results reveal that the incorporation of Ce can optimize the electronic structure and endow appropriate OH binding energy during HER, thereby significantly accelerating HER kinetics. Moreover, the optimization of NiP crystal structure induced by Ce incorporation can adjust the surface microstructure and release the interfacial stress between the catalytic layer and substrate, resulting in accelerated charge and mass transfer and enhanced stability during the HER process. When integrated into an AEMWE, the optimized NiCeP catalyst displays a low cell voltage of 1.79 V at 1000 mA/cm 2 and maintains stable operation up to 200 h under industrial conditions. This work highlights the importance of modification in the crystal and electronic structure of catalysts in advancing AEMWE under fluctuating renewable energy driving conditions.
Cheng et al. (Thu,) studied this question.