D. Zhao; Y. Wang; H. Chen; Y. Liu; J. Zhang; L. Ma; C. Yang; Y. Cui; M. Wang; J. Geng; D. Kong; X. Zhang; Y. Guo; Z. Tang; C. Dan; C. Man; Z. Chen; H. Wang; T. Yamaguchi; E. Ma
Materials Today (2025)
Nanocrystalline (NC) metals possess high strength due to its extremely small grain size, but the strength-plasticity trade-off, poor thermal stability, and limitation to a few micrometers in size have seriously hampered their widespread application for a long time. Here, we propose a universal and facile strategy to solve these problems all at once, by exploiting the synergistic aspect of rapid electrical-current-activated sintering (RECAS) and multi-component NC alloy. We demonstrate RECAS as an efficient way to achieve dense and robust claddings versatile in dimensions (i.e., ≥1 mm in thickness), also with uniform NC grain sizes. The NC CoCrNi medium-entropy alloy cladding is used to demonstrate the simultaneous realization of excellent strength-plasticity combination, and unprecedented high thermal stability of NC grain size up to ∼ 0.84Tm (Tm, melting point), and the robust performance in terms of resistance to wear, corrosion and cavitation erosion. These advances open an avenue to a much-expanded repertoire of available parts made of NC metals/alloys (including their size, shape and composition), as well as an increased flexibility with regard to property combinations that extend application possibilities.