Researchers at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Pennsylvania successfully synthesized a multiscale multi-principal element alloy (MPEA) composed of nickel, iron, and manganese through an integrated processing framework of DIW-based additive manufacturing combined with chemical dealloying. The work provides a new pathway to accelerate both the discovery and the production of novel multiscale MPEAs and offers great potential for energy conversion and storage applications.
The work is published in the journal Materials Futures.
MPEAs, a class of metal alloys based on random mixing of multi-principal elements, exhibit improved mechanical and functional properties over traditional alloys. However, two challenges limit their practical applications, namely the difficulty of fabricating a large mass of bulk nanostructured MPEAs, and the vast compositional space needed to explore for high-throughput discovery.
As a solution, a collaboration of two research teams from the University of Massachusetts and the University of Pennsylvania successfully synthesized a composition-tailored hierarchically porous NiFeMn MPEAs via an integrated approach of DIW-based additive manufacturing combined with chemical dealloying.
The team prepared bulk samples without extended dealloying time thanks to the efficient diffusion enabled by multiscale pores. A facile control of composition was achieved through adjusting the ratio of starting metal powders, offering a pathway for high-throughput material discovery, as shown by the case study of composition-dependent oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in the study.
The integrated approach, when combined with machine-learning-based simulation, can be utilized for exploring the vast compositional space of MPEAs. This is of great importance since the composition-performance relationship is often non-linear, complicated by the underlying phases and microstructures of the MPEAs, thus necessitating a comprehensive and high-throughput material discovery.
Findings gained in this work are expected to broaden the possibilities for bulk fabrication of nanostructured MPEAs. Moreover, in this work, composition-dependent OER performance is shown as a case study, while this technique can be extended beyond OER to many other compositionally complex alloy systems for electrochemical reactions such as hydrogen evolution reactions and oxygen reduction reactions towards a myriad of renewable energy applications.
Provided by
Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory
