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General synthesis of high-entropy alloy and ceramic nanoparticles in nanoseconds

Nature Synthesis volume 1, pages 138–146 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

High-entropy materials, which include high-entropy alloys and high-entropy ceramics, show promise for their use in many fields, yet a robust synthesis strategy is lacking. Here we present a simple and general approach, laser scanning ablation, to synthesize a library of high-entropy alloy and ceramic nanoparticles. The laser scanning ablation method takes only five nanoseconds per pulse to ablate the corresponding nanoparticle precursors at atmospheric temperature and pressure. The ultrarapid process ensures that dissimilar metallic elements combine regardless of their thermodynamic solubility. As a laser pulse confines energy to the desired microregions, the laser scanning ablation method renders a high-entropy material nanoparticle loading on various substrates, which include thermally sensitive substrates. Applied as electrocatalysts for overall water splitting, the as-prepared high-entropy material nanoparticles can achieve an overpotential of 185 mV @ 10 mA cm–2. This versatile strategy enables the preparation of materials useful for a range of fields, such as biomedicine, catalysis, energy storage and sensors.

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Fig. 1: The LSA approach to synthesize NPs of HEAs.
Fig. 2: Formation mechanisms of HEA NPs for the LSA strategy.
Fig. 3: Size control of HEA NPs by using repeated cycles of laser scanning.
Fig. 4: LSA synthesis of HEC NPs.
Fig. 5: Electrocatalytic performance of HEM NPs for water splitting.

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All the supporting data are provided in the main text and Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFA0710302), the Major Research Plan of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91963206), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52072169, 51627810 and 51972164), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20201202), the Program for Guangdong Introducing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams (2019ZT08L101), the Open Fund of the Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics (2018WNLOKF020), the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX19_0043), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (14380180) and the Civil Aerospace Technology Research Project (B0108).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eco-materials and Renewable Energy Research Center (ERERC), School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, P. R. China

    Bing Wang, Yuan Cao, Congping Wu, Yingfang Yao & Zhigang Zou

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Bing Wang & Zhiqun Lin

  3. Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Nano Technology, National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, P. R. China

    Bing Wang, Yingfang Yao & Zhigang Zou

  4. Kunshan Innovation Institute of Nanjing University, Kunshan, P. R. China

    Bing Wang, Congping Wu, Yingfang Yao & Zhigang Zou

  5. College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, P. R. China

    Cheng Wang, Xiwen Yu, Linfeng Gao, Yingfang Yao & Zhigang Zou

  6. School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shenzhen, P. R. China

    Zhigang Zou

  7. Macau Institute of Systems Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China

    Zhigang Zou

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  1. Bing Wang
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Contributions

B.W., Y.Y., Z.L. and Z.Z. conceived the idea and designed the present work. B.W. carried out the experiments. C. Wang, X.Y. and C. Wu performed the detailed microscopic characterizations. Y.C. and L.G. directed the catalytic evaluation.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yingfang Yao, Zhiqun Lin or Zhigang Zou.

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Competing interests

Provisional patent applications have been applied for through Nanjing University (China patent of 202011094113.4 and US patent of 20254CJH).The authors of Zhigang Zou, Bing Wang, Yingfang Yao, Congping Wu are invovled in the patent applications.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Synthesis thanks Yadong Yin and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peter Seavill was the primary editor on this article and managed its editorial process and peer review in collaboration with the rest of the editorial team.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1 and 2, Figs. 1–26 and Tables 1–4.

Supplementary Video 1

Expansion of bubbles into the hexane during laser ablation of carbon nanofibres with HAuCl4, FeCl3, CoCl2, CuCl2, CrCl3 salts.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 5

Electrocatalytic water-splitting performance.

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Wang, B., Wang, C., Yu, X. et al. General synthesis of high-entropy alloy and ceramic nanoparticles in nanoseconds. Nat Synth 1, 138–146 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-021-00004-1

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