A research team at the Institute of Materials Chemistry at TU Wien, led by Professor Dominik Eder, has developed a new synthetic approach to create durable, conductive, and catalytically active hybrid framework materials for (photo)electrocatalytic water splitting. The study, published in Nature Communications, aims to address the need for sustainable energy carriers like hydrogen by producing it through water splitting. The team focused on zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), which offer large surface areas and ample adsorption sites for water molecules as catalysts. However, the conventional ZIFs lacked stability and electronic conductivity for efficient electrocatalytic applications. To overcome this, the team mixed two organic ligands in the ZIF structure, significantly improving its stability and conductivity. This modification led to enhanced (photo)electrocatalytic performance, increasing the oxygen evolution reaction rate by 10 times. Through a combination of experimental and computational approaches, the team discovered that the synergistic interaction of the two ligands strengthened the coordination bond with the metal, preventing degradation during the reaction. The researchers are now looking into applying this approach to other materials like metal-organic frameworks for various applications such as catalysis, sensing, and solar energy conversion.