Unlocking the electrocatalytic potential of porous high-entropy materials: Synthesis, structure, and electrocatalytic performance

Abstract Porous high-entropy materials (PHEMs) integrate the solid-solution characteristics of multiple elements with hierarchical porous structures, combining intrinsic advantages such as high-entropy effects and lattice distortion with structural benefits like high active specific surface area and efficient mass transport channels. They demonstrate remarkable potential in energy conversion reactions including hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution, and nitrate reduction to ammonia, offering a promising alternative to traditional noble metal catalysts. In recent years, significant progress has been made in the synthesis, structural regulation and electrocatalytic performance research of PHEMs. However, this field is still in the development stage. Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive and systematic understanding of the intrinsic relationship between material composition, microstructure, and macroscopic catalytic performance. Synthesis methods remain to be systematically summarized, and the multi-component nature poses challenges in controlling composition and phase structure. Some approaches also suffer from issues such as non-uniform pore size distribution and element segregation, which hinder practical application and commercialization. Therefore, this review systematically outlines the core definition and features of PHEMs, elaborates on the principles and advances of mainstream synthesis strategies, summarizes the governing principles of structural regulation, analyzes their electrocatalytic performance, discusses existing key challenges, and looks forward to future research directions, aiming to provide systematic guidance for related studies.