High-Entropy Alloys and Their Derived Compounds as Electrocatalysts: Understanding, Preparation and Application

High-entropy alloy (HEA) catalysts have attracted significant attention from researchers. In many cases, HEAs exhibit high activity and selectivity for catalytic reactions due to four “core effects”: high entropy effect, lattice distortion effect, slow diffusion effect, and mixing effect. However, a systematic summary of HEA catalyst design and understanding is lacking. In this review, the reasons for the outstanding performance of HEA catalysts are first discussed from multiple perspectives, such as excellent mechanical properties, ultra-high-performance stability, and the potential for compositional optimization. Furthermore, to deepen our understanding of HEA catalysts, the rational design of HEA catalysts is introduced, covering design principles, element selection, and the use of algorithms for prediction. Next, several common preparation methods for HEAs are introduced, including chemical co-reduction, solution combustion, mechanical alloying, and sol–gel methods. Finally, the research progress of HEA catalysts in hydrogen evolution reactions, oxygen evolution reactions, and oxygen reduction reactions is presented. Unlike existing reviews, this work establishes a unified framework connecting HEA fundamentals (entropy effects), computational design, scalable synthesis, and application-specific performance, while identifying underexplored pathways like lattice-oxygen-mediated mechanisms (LOM) for future research.