Entropy-Driven Nonmetal Doping for Electrocatalysis and Energy Storage

Doping has long been a cornerstone strategy in materials engineering, providing a powerful means to tailor electronic structures, manipulate defect landscapes, and engineer interfacial properties. Nonmetal high-entropy doping (HED) has recently been proposed as an innovative strategy, in which multiple nonmetal elements are incorporated into a single host lattice to harness configurational entropy and promote synergistic interactions. This approach not only enriches catalytic active sites and stabilizes structural frameworks but also enables unprecedented flexibility in tuning electronic states, thereby overcoming the intrinsic limitations of conventional doping. The nonmetal HED strategy may open new avenues for advanced energy materials by enabling charge redistribution, defect regulation, and dynamic interfacial modulation. Its potential in electrocatalysis and energy storage has already been demonstrated in recent studies. This perspective highlights the fundamental principles, properties, performance-enhancement mechanisms, and emerging opportunities, positioning nonmetal entropy engineering as a powerful strategy for developing metal-free, high-performance electrocatalysis and energy storage.