Twelve-Component Free-Standing Nanoporous High-Entropy Alloys for Multifunctional Electrocatalysis

• Published in: ACS materials letters Vol. 4; no. 1; pp. 181 - 189
• Main Authors: Yu, Tingting, Zhang, Yanyi, Hu, Yixuan, Hu, Kailong, Lin, Xi, Xie, Guoqiang, Liu, Xingjun, Reddy, Kolan Madhav, Ito, Yoshikazu, Qiu, Hua-Jun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 03.01.2022
• ISSN: 2639-4979; 2639-4979
• DOI: 10.1021/acsmaterialslett.1c00762

Nanostructured high-entropy alloys (HEAs) with tunable compositions have attracted intensive scientific attention on their unique structural, catalytic, and energy-storage capabilities. In this work, we introduce a straightforward two-step fabrication procedure to synthesize free-standing single phase multicomponent nanoporous HEAs consisting of 12 or 16 different elements including both noble and non-noble metals. The electrocatalytic results reveal that the synergistic elemental combinations of such HEAs with a fine porous structure give rise to enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalytic activities superior to the commercial Pt/C and, at the same time, enhanced oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalytic activity over the commercial IrO2 catalyst. The demonstrated multifunctional catalytic performance of these free-standing nanoporous HEAs would facilitate large current densities in the water splitting reactions, rechargeable Zn-air batteries, and many other catalytic, sensing, and energy applications.