- Wang, Xizheng;
- Zhao, Yunhao;
- Chen, Gang;
- Zhao, Xinpeng;
- Liu, Chuan;
- Sridar, Soumya;
- Pizano, Luis Fernando Ladinos;
- Li, Shuke;
- Brozena, Alexandra H;
- Guo, Miao;
- Zhang, Hanlei;
- Wang, Yuankang;
- Xiong, Wei;
- Hu, Liangbing
Multi-principal element alloys (MPEA) demonstrate superior synergetic properties compared to single-element predominated traditional alloys. However, the rapid melting and uniform mixing of multi-elements for the fabrication of MPEA structural materials by metallic 3D printing is challenging as it is difficult to achieve both a high temperature and uniform temperature distribution in a sufficient heating source simultaneously. Herein, we report an ultrahigh-temperature melt printing method that can achieve rapid multi-elemental melting and uniform mixing for MPEA fabrication. In a typical fabrication process, multi-elemental metal powders are loaded into a high-temperature column zone that can be heated up to 3000 K via Joule heating, followed by melting on the order of milliseconds and mixing into homogenous alloys, which we attribute to the sufficiently uniform high-temperature heating zone. As proof-of-concept, we successfully fabricated single-phase bulk NiFeCrCo MPEA with uniform grain size. This ultrahigh-temperature rapid melt printing process provides excellent potential toward MPEA 3D printing.