Ⅰ. Introduction 1 1.1 Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) 1 1.1.1 Fundamental mechanisms of OER 2 1.1.2 Strategies for the development of efficient catalyst for the OER 3 1.1.3 Issues with nickel foam for OER 3 1.1.4 Introduction to the topic of this thesis 4 1.2 Characterization technique 6 1.2.1 Materials characterization 6 1.2.2 Electrochemical characterization 7 II. Experimental 8 2.1 Reagents and materials 8 2.2 Preparation of hierarchical porous nickel foam 8 2.3 Synthesis of the Fe-NF and hNF 8 III. Results and discussion 9 IV. Conclusion 19 V. References 20