The increasing amount of installed power capacity from wind and solar power plants puts high demand on reliable and scalable system, capable of storing the energy during the overproduction and releasing it in times of deficit. The concept of hydrogen economy seems to be an interesting alternative in this regard. It is built around the conversion of electricity into H2 in times of energy overproduction and its subsequent utilization in various different ways, such as converting back to electricity on-site via fuel cells, injecting into the existing natural gas network, processing as a commodity or dispatching as an energy vector. Regardless of which pathway for H2 is ultimately chosen, the key inseparable technology necessary for the concept of hydrogen economy to function remains the water electrolysis. Proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers (PEM-WE) are arguably the most suitable for industrial scale-up. Still there are challenges that need to be solved, should the technology enter the mass production. One of the most crucial aspects is the need of lowering the amount of iridium on the anode of PEM-WE. It is currently the only sufficiently active catalyst which withstands the aggressive conditions during the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Reducing Ir loading through its dispersion over the catalyst support, a method adopted from fuel cell industry, is not trivial since it is hard to find inexpensive, corrosion-resistant and conductive material in form of nanoparticles.In this work, we present and discuss an innovative, yet very straightforward and industrially adaptable approach on how to circumvent the above mentioned problem. The proposed approach is based on the utilization of magnetron sputtering. The novelty of our patented approach is in simultaneous plasma etching of the PEM and deposition of CeOx thin film onto its surface. The CeOx layer serves as a masking element - the loss of material is hindered at the places with its sufficient coverage; in contrast, unprotected places are being continually etched out. This result in formation of a fiber-like structure with cross-sectional dimensions much smaller than their height. The modified surface of the PEM itself is therefore sufficiently large to carry the subsequently deposited thin-film catalyst completely on its own. Our study comprises characterization of the modified PEM morphology, electrochemical active surface area determination via rotating disk electrode and in-cell PEM-WE performance testing, including electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Figure 1