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Page 10 of 21 Chen et al. J Mater Inf 2022;2:19 https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/jmi.2022.23

Figure 6. Schematic of (A) HT experimental setup for synthesizing alloys with a large composition space. (B) RF-ICP synthesis of HEAs
using mixed pure metal powders. Fast RF-ICP synthesis of alloys using powder mixtures: (C) typical optical microscopy (OM) images
showing the evolution of porosity in the Cu Ni alloy under different heating times; (D) temperature profile of RF-ICP synthesis.
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Reproduced with permission . Copyright 2021, Wiley-VCH. RF-ICP: radio frequency inductively coupled plasma; MEA:
medium-entropy alloy; HEA: high-entropy alloy.
fashion. The achieved knowledge was the key to improving the subsequent screening and alloy design. This
work indicates that HT theoretical calculations, synthesis and characterization are no longer bottlenecks for
the development of HEAs. Note that these methodologies were used to develop HEAs with optimum
mechanical properties. It is still challenging to achieve desired catalytic performances in these HT
synthesized HEA catalysts, as it is difficult to control the surface properties, morphology and particle size of
the synthesized HEAs, which are crucial in the field of catalysis.

To extend the application of HEAs in the catalysis field, Yao et al. reported a HT synthesis technique for the
compositional design and rapid thermal-shock treatment of ultrafine HEA nanoclusters
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(PtPdRhRuIrFeCoNi) with a homogeneous alloy structure, as shown in Figure 8A . In this process, carbon
materials with surface defects were used as the supports to ensure the size uniformity for the different
composition samples. The HT HEA catalyst systems were then rapidly tested by scanning droplet cell
analysis [Figure 8B] for their electrochemical ORR. Their corresponding catalytic performance is displayed
in Figure 8C and D, where the two best-performing HEA catalysts were quickly identified. This work
indicates that the rapid synthesis and compositional exploration of HEAs by HT techniques are very
efficient for exploring HEA catalysts.