Engineering all-organic electrocatalysts with asymmetric dual-active sites for uncommon oxygen-evolving pathway

The performance of electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction is governed by molecular evolution pathways, yet their regulation remains a significant experimental and theoretical hurdle. Herein, we propose the construction of asymmetric non-metallic dual-active sites through engineering hydroxyl groups in an all-organic electrocatalyst, thereby triggering an uncommon asymmetric oxide pathway mechanism. This reaction pathway reduces the requirement of strict equilibrium on adsorption energies at dual-active sites for traditional oxide pathway mechanism, and also avoids the limitation of the linear scaling relationship for adsorbate evolution mechanism. Therefore, the proposed metal-free electrocatalyst shows competitive oxygen evolution reaction performance with an overpotential of 364.3 ± 4.5 mV at 1.0 A·cm−2. Combining operando spectroscopic/mass spectrometry and theoretical calculations unveils that the asymmetric oxide pathway mechanism undergoes the critical step of *OH intramolecular nucleophilic attack to neighboring *O, forming *OOH with drastically reducing energy barriers. This work shows the diversity of oxygen evolution pathways in all-organic electrocatalysts and offers a viewpoint for optimizing the electrocatalytic performances of metal-free solids. Controlling reaction pathways in the oxygen evolution reaction remains a major challenge for efficient electrocatalysis. Here, the authors report an all-organic catalyst with asymmetric dual sites that enables an unconventional oxide pathway, lowering energy barriers and improving high-current performance.