High-Entropy Materials as Catalysts for Alcohol and Polyol Electro-oxidation: Advances, Mechanisms, and Future Perspectives

High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide Electrocatalytic oxidation of alcohols and polyols has recently emerged as a compelling alternative to the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), offering lower anodic overpotentials and the simultaneous production of hydrogen and value-added chemicals. High-entropy materials (HEMs) including alloys, oxides, hydroxides, and chalcogenides have distinguished themselves as a transformative class of catalysts owing to their configurational entropy, lattice distortion, sluggish diffusion, and cocktail effects. These entropy-driven characteristics stabilize diverse active sites, modulate electronic structures, and promote dynamic redox chemistry, thereby enabling multielectron transfer, C–C bond cleavage, and selective product formation. Unlike conventional Pt-based catalysts that suffer from CO poisoning and limited durability, HEMs integrate multiple elements into simple lattices, delivering enhanced activity, robustness, and tunability. This review presents a comprehensive overview of HEMs for methanol, ethanol, glycerol, ethylene glycol, and benzyl alcohol electro-oxidation. We summarize recent advances in entropy-engineered electrocatalysts, highlight mechanistic insights into adsorption energetics and reaction pathways, and compare their performance against conventional benchmarks. Finally, we identify critical research gaps, including acid-stable HEMs, device-level integration, and mechanistic selectivity, and at the same time provide an outlook on how the entropy-driven design can bridge hydrogen production with sustainable chemical manufacturing.