As a part of R&D work for the high intensity proton linac of China Accelerator Driven Sub-critical System project, a superconducting half-wave cavity with a frequency of 162.5 MHz and an optimal beta of 0.15 (HWR015) has been developed at Institute of Modern Physics (IMP), Chinese Academy of Sciences. In this paper, the design and test results will be described in detail. We introduced a new stiffening strategy for the HWR cavity, the simulation results show that the cavity has much lower frequency sensitivity coefficient (df/dp), Lorentz force detuning coefficient (KL), and can achieve more stable mechanical properties. The performance of the HWR cavity operated in cryostat will be also reported.