Recent Advancement in Metal‐Organic Framework for Water Electrolysis: A Review

Abstract An alternative to fossil fuel is essential to overcome energy shortages and resolve the environmental problem. Hydrogen production via earth‐abundant water resources is a clean, sustainable, and energy‐rich fuel source. For the water splitting process, the catalyst is an essential need to enhance the kinetics of the overall reaction. Therefore, noble metals are used as the state‐of‐the‐art catalyst for the OER and HER process due to their remarkable efficiency and stability. But, their high cost and inadequacy are the main obstructs to their commercialization. To commercialize the process, researchers are trying to replace the expensive noble catalyst with a non‐noble stable, conductive, and more productive catalyst. In recent decades, transition metal based metal organic framework (MOF) has been extensively used as an electro‐catalyst to enhance the kinetics of the OER and HER process. MOF as an electro‐catalyst is a promising candidate to improve the rate of water splitting reaction due to their inherent properties such as high surface area, tunable morphology, and high porosity. In this review, the significant data of recent years are assembled for the water splitting process by using the MOFs as an electro‐catalyst. This review not only captures the advancement in MOF materials with the effective approach of designing but also indicates the catalyst evaluation parameters and detailed mechanism of the HER and the OER process. Meanwhile, challenges and future prospectus of the MOF based catalyst for the water splitting process are also described here. Hopefully, this review article will help to develop a more productive MOF for the generation of green and sustainable hydrogen.