Significance Water provides an attractive medium for storing solar energy via water splitting. Charge-separated states generated by solar capture may be transferred to catalysts that split water to hydrogen and oxygen. Most water-splitting catalysts comprising earth-abundant elements are susceptible to corrosion when operated in neutral and natural water. Such corrosion may be circumvented if the catalysts are self-healing. The design of self-healing catalysts allows neutral water and natural water sources to be used for water splitting, greatly simplifying the implementation of using water as a distributed energy storage medium for solar energy.