Rational design of cost-effective high-performance electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of great significance for electrochemical water splitting.Herein,we adopt a nitrogen doping method to fabricate self-supported N-doped CoO nanowire arrays (N-CoO) as active electrocatalysts via a facile hydrothermal combined doping method.The N-CoO nanowires are strongly composited with the carbon cloth substrate forming free-standing electrode with reinforced stability and high electronic conductivity.Owing to the increased accessible and electroactive areas,rich/short pathways for charge transfer and enhanced electronic conductivity,the N-CoO electrode exhibits excellent electrocatalytic performance for OER with a low overpotential (319mV at 10mAcm-2 and 410mY at 100mAcm-2) and a low Tafel slope of 74mVdec-1 as well as superior long-term stability with no decay in 24h continuous test in alkaline solution.Our reported design and optimization strategy provide a promising way to construct interesting well-aligned arrays for application in energy storage and conversion.