Conductive Covalent Organic Framework-Based Hybrid Anodes for Anion Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis: Advances in Materials Design, OER Catalysis, and Future Perspectives

Anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) is a promising route to low-cost, noble-metal-free green hydrogen production, but its performance remains limited by the sluggish kinetics of the anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and by the poor intrinsic electrical conductivity of many candidate catalyst supports. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) offer crystalline, highly porous, and chemically tunable platforms for anchoring transition-metal and single-atom active sites, but pristine COFs are electrically insulating. This review summarizes recent progress in conductive COF-based hybrid anodes for AEMWE, covering the fundamentals of AEMWE operation, COF chemistry and synthesis, strategies for engineering electrical conductivity (hybridization with MXene, graphene, carbon nanotubes, heteroatom doping, metal coordination, defect and interface engineering), the OER mechanism on COF-based active sites, electrochemical performance metrics, comparative benchmarking against commercial and other non-precious-metal catalysts, computational and machine-learning-assisted design approaches, and the remaining challenges in stability, scalability, and cost that must be addressed before commercialization.