Effect of Selective Metallic Defects on Catalytic Performance of Alloy Nanosheets

Defects in the crystal structure of nanomaterials are important for their diverse applications. As, defects in 2D framework allow surface confinement effects, efficient molecular accessibility, high surface-area to volume-ratio and lead to higher catalytic activity, but it is challenging to expose defects of specific metal on the surface of 2D alloy and find the correlation between defective structure and electrocatalytic properties with atomic precision. Herein, the work paves the way for the controlled synthesis of ultrathin porous Ir–Cu nanosheets (NSs) with selectively iridium (Ir) rich defects to boost their performance for acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). X-ray absorption spectroscopy reveals that the oxidized states of Ir in defects of porous NSs significantly impact the electronic structure and decline the energy barrier. As a result, porous Ir–Cu/C NSs deliver improved OER activity with an overpotential of 237 mV for reaching 10 mA cm⁻² and exhibit significantly higher mass activity than benchmark Ir/C under acidic conditions. Therefore, the present work highlights the concept of constructing a selective noble metal defect-rich open structure for catalytic applications.