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Self-adhesive high-entropy oxide sub-nanowire monolithic electrocatalysts

Nature Nanotechnology (2026) Cite this article

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Abstract

Industrial seawater electrolysis remains constrained in achieving both high catalytic activity and long-term durability, with key limitations including structural degradation and mechanical instability within catalyst layers. Here we show a self-adhesive high-entropy oxide sub-nanowire monolithic catalyst that overcomes both obstacles. The catalyst is synthesized under mild conditions and incorporates 14 metal elements into uniform ~1.2 nm sub-nanowires with strong intrinsic adhesion to conductive substrates, eliminating the need for external binders. It also features unconventional active sites that enable efficient and durable lattice oxygen activation while preserving structural integrity during prolonged operation. It exhibits overpotentials of 129 mV in 1 M KOH and 153 mV in 1 M KOH + seawater at 10 mA cm−2, and maintains continuous operation at 1,000 mA cm−2 for 4,700 h and 4,400 h, respectively. Integrated into an anion exchange membrane seawater electrolyser, it delivers 3,000 mA cm−2 at 1.70 V (80 °C) and operates continuously for over 3,819 h at 2,000 mA cm−2 under ambient conditions.

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Fig. 1: Synthesis and structural characterization of 14-HEO SNWs.
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Fig. 2: Self-adhesive performance of 14-HEO SNWs.
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Fig. 3: Water and seawater oxidation performance of 14-HEO SNWs.
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Fig. 4: Device performance of AEMWE/AEMSE based on 14-HEO SNWs.
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Fig. 5: DFT investigation of water and seawater oxidation on HEO SNWs.
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Data availability

All relevant data during the study are available from the corresponding authors upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 22241502 (X.W.), 92461314 (X.W.), 22588301 (X.W.), 22305137 (Q.L.) and 22525302 (H.X.)) and the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFA1503000 (H.X.)). Additional funding was provided by the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (number E2025106022 (X.W.)). We also appreciate the computational resources provided by the Center of High-Performance Computing at Tsinghua University and the support from the Tsinghua Xuetang Talents Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Research Center of Advanced Rare Earth Materials, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Yuan Huang  (黄远), Qingda Liu  (刘清达) & Xun Wang  (王训)

  2. Department of Chemistry and Key Laboratory of Organic Optoelectronics and Molecular Engineering of Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Zeyu Wang  (王泽禹) & Hai Xiao  (肖海)

  3. Beijing National Center for Electron Microscopy and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Xi Chen  (陈曦) & Lin Gu  (谷林)

  4. Research Center for Sub-Nanometer Scale Materials Chemistry, Institute of Tsinghua University Hebei, Hebei, China

    Xun Wang  (王训)

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  1. Yuan Huang  (黄远)
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Contributions

Y.H. and Z.W. contributed equally to this work. X.W. conceived and guided the project. Y.H. designed and conducted the experiments. Z.W. under the supervision of H.X. performed the calculations and analysis. X.C. conducted the TEM characterization under the guidance of L.G. Y.H. and Z.W. co-wrote the paper with input from all authors. Q.L. assisted with data analysis and discussions. All authors reviewed the results and provided comments on the paper.

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Correspondence to Hai Xiao  (肖海), Qingda Liu  (刘清达) or Xun Wang  (王训).

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Huang, Y., Wang, Z., Chen, X. et al. Self-adhesive high-entropy oxide sub-nanowire monolithic electrocatalysts. Nat. Nanotechnol. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-026-02175-4

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