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Abstract The most feasible technique for producing green hydrogen is water electrolysis. In recent years, there has been significant study conducted on the use of transition metal compounds as electrocatalysts for both anodes and cathodes. Peoples have attempted several strategies to improve the electrocatalytic activity of their original structure. One such technique involves introducing rare earth metals or creating heterostructures with compounds based on rare earth metals. The incorporation of rare earth metals significantly enhances the activity by many folds, while their compounds offer structural stability and the ability to manipulate the electronic properties of the original system. These factors have led to a recent boom in investigations on rare earth metal‐based electrocatalysts. There is currently a pressing demand for a review article that can provide a comprehensive overview of the scientific advancements and elucidate the mechanistic aspects of the impact of lanthanide doping. This review begins by explaining the electronic structure of the lanthanides. We next examine the mechanistic aspects, followed by recent advancements in lanthanide doping and heterostructure formation for water electrolysis applications. It is expected that this particular effort will benefit a broad audience and stimulate more research in this area of interest.

Abstract Over the past decades, tremendous effort has been made to enhance the water‐splitting via fabricating eco‐friendly electrocatalyst with increased conductivity, and large number of accessible active sites in lab scale. However, the development of earth abundant efficient electrocatalyst with superior activity for ‐seawater‐splitting remains a great challenge for the researchers. In this regard, self‐supported catalysts are found to be the most promising candidates, they have the features of increased loading, superior adhesion, rapid mass and charge transfer, and easy wettability for large scale hydrogen production via electrochemical seawater splitting. This review investigates different fabrication processes for the self‐supported catalyst, emphasizing their distinct characteristics that contribute to improved activity. Furthermore, we provided a detailed elucidation of the procedure and characteristics of seawater splitting, emphasizing the most recent progress in the creation of self‐supportive catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and bifunctional activity. We have also examined the current barriers and potential prospects for advancing the utilization of self‐supported catalysts in the process of seawater splitting.

Summary: Electrochemical water splitting is one of the most efficient techniques to produce hydrogen in an environmentally friendly way. However, a sluggish anodic reaction, namely oxygen evolution reaction (OER), requires the use of an efficient electrocatalyst for achieving economic hydrogen production. Transition‐metal‐based layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are promising electrocatalysts for reducing the overpotential of OER in alkaline electrolyte, which is essential for efficient water electrolysis. Nickel‐iron‐based LDHs (Ni‐Fe LDH) have been regarded as the best OER electrocatalysts under alkaline conditions. Hence, a number of research studies have been conducted on further improving the electrocatalytic performance of Ni‐Fe LDH. Although the chemical blending of other transition metals with Ni‐Fe‐LDH is a simple and reliable strategy to enhance the OER activity of Ni‐Fe‐LDH, a systematic investigation on designing Ni‐Fe‐LDH with different additional elements is still lacking. In addition, the design of multi‐metallic LDH compound via only experimental method is very costly and time‐consuming process. In this study, atomic‐scale computational and experimental studies are performed to design OER electrocatalysts including unary, binary, and ternary LDH compounds consisting of Ni, Fe, Al, and Co. Density functional theory calculations predict that Ni‐Fe‐Co ternary LDH can lead to the lowest overpotential for alkaline OER among various computationally modeled LDH systems. Further, experimental verifications successfully demonstrate the computational prediction wherein Ni‐Fe‐Co‐LDH exhibits superior catalytic performance compared with Ni‐Fe‐LDH and benchmark IrO2 catalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]