Engineering High‐Energy Interfacial Structures for High‐Performance Oxygen‐Involving Electrocatalysis

Engineering high‐energy interfacial structures for high‐performance electrocatalysis is achieved by chemical coupling of active CoO nanoclusters and high‐index facet Mn3O4 nano‐octahedrons (hi‐Mn3O4). A thorough characterization, including synchrotron‐based near edge X‐ray absorption fine structure, reveals that strong interactions between both components promote the formation of high‐energy interfacial Mn‐O‐Co species and high oxidation state CoO, from which electrons are drawn by MnIII‐O present in hi‐Mn3O4. The CoO/hi‐Mn3O4 demonstrates an excellent catalytic performance over the conventional metal oxide‐based electrocatalysts, which is reflected by 1.2 times higher oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity than that of Ru/C and a comparable oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity to that of Pt/C as well as a better stability than that of Ru/C (95 % vs. 81 % retained OER activity) and Pt/C (92 % vs. 78 % retained ORR activity after 10 h running) in alkaline electrolyte.