Background: As a promising green energy conversion device, direct ethylene glycol fuel cells (DEGFC) have been widely studied. But high-cost of their catalysts has severely limited large-scale commercial application. Developing economic and effective anodic electrocatalyst is an urgent work presently.

Methods: Herein, an efficient high entropy alloy catalyst (HEA, penta-element) was prepared. Then, their catalytic performance and properties were authenticated by some electrochemical and physical methods. Importantly, it was also applied to a real DEGFC stack.

Significant findings: Notably, the ethylene glycol oxidation current density (0.65 A mg⁻¹_PtPdAu) on as-prepared HEA is three times than that of commercial Pt/C (0.22 A mg⁻¹_Pt) with good long-term durability. Moreover, the HEA-equipped DEGFC obtains an open circuit potential of 0.58 V, which delivers 2 times larger peak power density (17.63 mW cm⁻²) than that of commercial Pt/C (7.37 mW cm⁻²). This work would be a good reference to developing other advanced HEA materials in electrocatalytic fields.