Light-triggered oxygen redox activity at the edge of cobalt oxyhydroxide for superior water oxidation (opens in new tab)

Introducing oxygen redox chemistry into cobalt oxyhydroxide effectively enhances catalytic activity by enabling direct O-O coupling, thereby bypassing the rate-limiting *OOH step in the conventional adsorbate evolution mechanism. However, the key challenge is to preserve the accessibility of non-bonding oxygen states while maintaining cobalt-oxygen covalency. Here we show that light irradiation triggers ligand-to-metal charge transfer in sulfur-treated cobalt oxyhydroxide (S-CoOOH), generatin...