Breaking the bottleneck of water electrolysis: new design framework for high-entropy materials paves the way for efficient hydrogen production

A recent comprehensive review published in Journal of Advanced Ceramics outlines a systematic design strategy for high-entropy materials (HEMs) as high-performance catalysts for water electrolysis, offering new hope for affordable and sustainable hydrogen production.

Hydrogen energy, with an energy density three times higher than fossil fuels, is regarded as a cornerstone of the carbon-neutral future. However, the widespread adoption of electrolytic hydrogen production has been hindered by the high cost and poor stability of traditional catalysts such as Pt and RuO₂.

The review, entitled “Design strategies for high entropy materials in water electrolysis: enhancing activity, stability, and reaction kinetics,” presents an integrated framework guiding the development of HEMs from atomic-level tuning to industrial-scale application. “The core advantage of HEMs lies in their multi-element composition, which brings synergistic effects that single-element catalysts cannot achieve,” said Dr. Jing Zhang, the first author and a PhD candidate at Shanghai University. “This allows us to simultaneously optimize activity, stability, and reaction kinetics.”

The authors highlight four unique effects of HEMs—high entropy effect, lattice distortion, sluggish diffusion, and cocktail effect—that together inhibit phase separation, reduce energy barriers for reactions, enhance structural stability, and lead to unexpected catalytic performance.

The team published their work in Journal of Advanced Ceramics on August 14, 2025.

The review systematically covers several key design strategies:

• Composition tuning and crystal structure selection to expose more active sites;
• Strain engineering and electronegativity modulation to optimize electronic structure;
• Morphology control to maximize active surface area;
• Carrier support to improve conductivity and stability;
• Computational guidance using machine learning and DFT to accelerate material discovery.

“We are moving from trial-and-error to a predictive design paradigm,” commented the author. “Machine learning can screen millions of compositions and identify candidates with performance surpassing Pt/C—this is a game-changer.”

Besides high activity, HEMs also exhibit exceptional durability under industrial operating conditions, thanks to entropy stabilization and intelligent element selection.

Looking forward, the team emphasizes the need for in-situ characterization, scalable synthesis methods, and expansion into other green energy applications such as CO₂ reduction and biomass conversion.

“Our ultimate goal is to enable low-cost, high-efficiency green hydrogen production at scale,” said co-corresponding author Prof. Wang Li. “HEMs represent a materials platform that can be tailored for a wide range of electrochemical reactions—we are only at the beginning.”

This work not only provides a clear roadmap for the development of next-generation electrocatalysts but also underscores the role of advanced materials in achieving global carbon neutrality.

Author and Research Team Profiles

Jing Zhang is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai University. Her research focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of high-entropy material catalysts for electrochemical applications, with an emphasis on understanding the underlying reaction mechanisms.

Bin Liu is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at Shanghai University. His research primarily involves the regulation of "composition-structure-chemical bond" in novel ceramics, the constitutive relationships in new material design, and studies on multi-scale defects and their relationship with properties. He has published over 170 SCI journal papers, cited more than 5900 times in SCI articles, and applied for/been granted 13 patents. He has been invited to organize/co-organize 13 computational sessions at domestic and international conferences and has given 21 invited talks at conferences hosted by organizations like the American Ceramic Society. He serves as an Associate Editor for J. Am. Ceram. Soc., and is on the editorial boards of J. Mater. Sci. Technol. and J. Adv. Ceram..

Professor Wenxian Li received his Ph.D. from the University of Wollongong, Australia, in 2010. In 2012, he received an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship funded (Industry) by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and a postdoctoral designation from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). In November 2012, he joined Western Sydney University as a Lecturer. Since 2015, Professor Li has been working at Shanghai University. In 2024, he joined the University of New South Wales, Australia, as an ARC Future Fellow. His research focuses on optimizing the performance of functional materials by tuning their electronic configurations, facilitating the efficient development and utilization of renewable energy.
 

About Journal of Advanced Ceramics

Journal of Advanced Ceramics (JAC) is an international academic journal that presents the state-of-the-art results of theoretical and experimental studies on the processing, structure, and properties of advanced ceramics and ceramic-based composites. JAC is Fully Open Access, monthly published by Tsinghua University Press, and exclusively available via SciOpen. JAC’s 2024 IF is 16.6, ranking in Top 1 (1/33, Q1) among all journals in “Materials Science, Ceramics” category, and its 2024 CiteScore is 25.9 (5/130) in Scopus database. ResearchGate homepage: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/Journal-of-Advanced-Ceramics-2227-8508