Electroconductive high-entropy metallic oxide ceramic composites with outstanding water evaporation ability and biocompatibility

Electroconductive ceramics were a class of materials that exhibited metal-like conductivity while also retaining the beneficial properties of ceramics. Currently, they were ceramic composites generally fabricated by sintering ceramic powders with conductive additives such as graphene or single-wall carbon nanotubes, which were expensive and often suffered from poor dispersibility and low performance. To address these issues, we developed a novel and facile sol–gel approach for synthesizing electroconductive ceramic composites. In this work, we have successfully synthesized high-entropy metallic (Ti, Mg, Al, Zr) oxide ceramic composites using cost-effective organic metallic coupling agents in a “one-pot” synthesis. Subsequent thermal sintering produced the ceramic composites with dramatically reduced resistivity through the creation of oxygen vacancies and homogeneous in situ graphitization. The resulting electroconductive ceramic composites also possessed remarkable mechanical properties, photothermal conversion ability, and biocompatibility. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first time that electroconductive high-entropy ceramic composites have been synthesized using organic metallic coupling agents. This work offered new potential for the fields of electro-discharge machining (EDM) processing, electronics, energy, solar-driven photothermal engineering, and biomedical industries, allowing easy and inexpensive production of electroconductive ceramic composites with unique properties. Graphical Abstract: (Figure presented.) © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.