The pursuit of materials with exceptional mechanical properties at elevated temperatures is a constant endeavor in materials research that has recently become more urgent in our quests in space exploration, energy sustainability, and national defense. One such class of materials that has emerged as a promising candidate to serve under extremely high temperatures is refractory high entropy alloys (RHEAs), which represent complex mixtures of metallic elements with high melting points. RHEAs are specifically known for their exceptional high-temperature strength, which have the potential to become the next-generation high-temperature materials that can replace current applied Ni-based superalloys. However, the bottleneck for the immediate application of RHEAs is their low ductility and poor formability, especially at room temperature. Recently, Mingwei Zhang led UC Davis researchers and collaborators at UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to unravel extensive tensile ductility and good strength during high-temperature deformation in an RHEA consisting of niobium, tantalum, titanium, and hafnium. Their findings were published in Acta Materialia. He was also involved in a collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Irvine, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to discover unprecedented fracture resistance in the same RHEA from cryogenic to elevated temperatures. The study was published in Science.

Following these important research findings, Zhang will be funded by the Army Research Office (ARO) to pioneer a high-throughput computational and experimental framework to rapidly identify RHEAs with room-temperature tensile ductility. The outcome of this research will play a foundational role in the development of RHEAs that can be machined and deformation processed for widespread applications.