Abstract
High-entropy alloy (HEA) nanomaterials provide opportunities and property combinations for energy and electronic applications, but their practical synthesis faces challenges of elemental immiscibility, metal reducibility, and particle aggregation during their synthesis. Herein, we report a broadly applicable non-equilibrium, scalable, and in-situ reducing flame aerosol process for synthesis of supported HEA nanoparticles. This versatile process can directly load a high concentration of 2 ~ 4 nm HEA nanoparticles on various 1- to 3-dimensional supports. Notably, simultaneous formation of HEA nanoparticles and a mesoporous silica support was successfully realized in a single step. Exploration of this process demonstrates the role of kinetics and entropy on decreasing alloy particle size and altering the reducibility of elements. We propose an entropy-induced reduction mechanism to incorporate oxidizable elements into HEAs, which extends the compositional space of HEA nanoparticles. As a representative catalytic application, we present a RuPdOsIrPt/graphene electrocatalyst with high activity and stability for hydrogen oxidation reaction. Our findings open horizons for high-performance HEA design and applications in diverse fields such as catalysis, electrochemistry, and sensing.
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Acknowledgements
A portion of the research was performed using computational resources sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation and located at the National Laboratory of the Rockies. This work at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) was supported by the DOE Buildings Technology Office under Contract number DEEE-0008675, by the DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory under Grant number DE-FE0032209, by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Grant number CBET-1804996, and by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Grant number DMR-2427094; Work at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231; This research used resources of the 8-ID (ISS) beamline of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory under Contract no. DE-SC0012704. The work authored by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344.
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Liu, S., Liang, J., Kaufman, J.L. et al. Non-equilibrium reducing flame aerosol process to create supported high-entropy alloy nanoparticles. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72958-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72958-9
