Ultrahigh-temperature melt printing of multi-principal element alloys

Multi-principal element alloy (MPEA) 3D printing is challenging due to the tradeoff between achieving high-temperature and sufficient heating zone. Here, the authors report an ultrahigh-temperature melt printing method that can achieve rapid melting and uniform elemental mixing for MPEA fabrication. 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.