Iron doped nickel oxide films which can work as the oxygen reactive catalysts were deposited by reactive sputtering from an alloy target in this experiment. We studied the influence of the sputtering parameters (working pressure and oxygen content in reactive atmosphere) on the oxygen evolution overpotential. It was found that higher atmospheric pressure and higher oxygen content in reactive atmosphere can effectively decrease the overpotentials of the films to a large extent. By physical analysis from XRD, SEM, EDS and XPS we summarized the factors which can influence the catalytic properties and also analyzed the role of Ni3+ ion in films in detail. (c) 2006 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.