Conductive polymer hydrogels have large surface area and high conductivity. Their properties can easily be tailored further by functionalizing them with metals and nonmetals. However, the potential of metal-conjugated hydrogels for electrocatalysis has rarely been investigated. In this work, we report the synthesis of transition metals-conjugated polyaniline-phytic acid (PANI-PA) hydrogels that show efficient electrocatalytic properties for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Among many transition metals studied, Fe is accommodated by the hydrogel the most because of the favorable affinity of the PA groups in the hydrogel for Fe. Meanwhile, those containing both Fe and Co are found to be the most effective for electrocatalysis of OER. The most optimized such hydrogel, NF@Hgel-Fe_0.3Co_0.1, which has 3:1 ratio of Fe and Co, needs an overpotential of only 280 mV to catalyze OER with a current density of 10 mV cm^-2 in 1 M KOH solution. Furthermore, these metal-doped PANI-PA hydrogels can easily be loaded on nickel foam and carbon cloth via a simple soak-and-dry method to form free-standing electrodes. Overall, the work demonstrates a facile synthesis and fabrication of sustainable OER electrocatalysts and electrodes that are composed of easily processable hydrogels conjugated with various earth-abundant transition metals.

Figure R. Schematic illustration of the synthesis of PA-PANI-Metal (Hgel-M_x) hydrogels for electrocatalysis of OER.