In this work, we successfully developed a photodeposition synthesis method to obtain TiO2@IrOx core-shell particles with an iridium content as low as 40 wt%. These core-shell particles are unique because of their thin (2.1 ± 0.4 nm) and homogeneous shell of iridium oxide. The formation mechanism of this thin shell was analyzed in detail and is attributed to the combination of seed formation during photodeposition and closing of the shell during annealing. In electrochemical three-electrode testing, the TiO2@IrOx catalyst exhibits both sufficiently high mass activity and decent stability in comparison to commercial catalysts. Notably, the powder conductivity of the core-shell catalyst was increased threefold with the shell as compared to the same catalyst without the shell. This increase is attributed to an improved electrical percolation because of the continuous shell. This finding combined with the novel synthesis method paves the way towards iridium core-shell catalysts with sufficient conductivity at low iridium contents. Due to the low iridium content of 40 wt% in the catalyst powder, a high catalyst layer thickness factor of 10.9 ± 1.1 µm (mg cm -2 ) -1 is achieved, which allows the fabrication of sufficiently thick catalyst layers even at low loadings of 0.22 mgIr cm -2 . The resulting low-loaded CCM outperforms the commercial catalyst in terms of both, activation overpotential and HFR. A possible explanation is that a thicker catalyst layer in the case of the core-shell CCM prevents CL cracking during operation and thus maintains the in situ in-plane conductivity. The reference CCM, on the contrary, exhibits a thin catalyst layer, which is prone to cracking which could explain the decreased performance. Altogether, the combined improvements of the TiO2@IrOx core-shell CL leads to a high single-cell performance of 1.77 V and 1.98 V at 2 A cm -2 and 4 A cm , respectively, at a low iridium loading of 0.22 mgIr cm -2 . Importantly, the core-shell structure of the catalyst was maintained after 200 h of single-cell operation. This novel TiO2@IrOx core-shell catalyst exhibits an iridium-specific power density of 17.9 kW gIr -1 , which is almost twice as high as the reference catalyst from Umicore, bringing PEMWE technology closer to the goal of 50 -100 kW gIr -1 while at the same time using well-known material systems and scalable processes.