New Breakthrough in Scientific Research: A High-Entropy Alloy with Wide-Temperature-Range Wear Resistance Unveiled, Pioneering a New Trend in Wear-Resistant Materials
(July 30, 2025) As the demand for material performance continues to rise in high-end equipment such as aerospace and nuclear energy systems, traditional wear-resistant materials are increasingly unable to meet the requirements of extremely complex operating conditions. Recently, the Lanzhou Institute of Chemistry and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has achieved a significant scientific breakthrough by designing and preparing a new type of medium-entropy alloy composed of nickel, aluminum, niobium, titanium, and vanadium. This alloy has become the metallic material with the best wear resistance reported to date over an exceptionally wide temperature range—from room temperature up to 800°C—and thus points to a new direction for the future development of wear-resistant materials.
Overcoming the Challenge of Wear Resistance Across a Wide Temperature Range
The friction and wear performance of traditional metallic materials often varies dramatically with temperature. At high temperatures, these materials are prone to oxidation and softening, leading to a sharp decline in wear resistance. To address this critical issue, the research team at the Lanzhou Institute of Chemistry has developed a series of high-entropy and medium-entropy alloys through fine-tuned control of composition and microstructure.
Among them, the newly developed nickel-aluminum-niobium-titanium-vanadium medium-entropy alloy features a unique multi-level nano-heterostructure and compositional fluctuation characteristics. It exhibits exceptional “wide-temperature-range” stability: whether at room temperature or at the high temperature of 800℃, it maintains an extremely low coefficient of friction and wear rate. The underlying mechanism lies in its ability to spontaneously form a protective friction layer during the friction process, thereby achieving “adaptive” lubrication and protection.
The industry is moving toward “high entropy” and “complexification.”
This achievement not only addresses the critical technical challenges of lubrication and wear resistance for core motion systems under high temperatures, but also signals a shift in wear-resistant materials—from traditional single-element alloys toward multi-principal-element “high-entropy/medium-entropy alloys.”
Meanwhile, according to the “2025 China Bimetallic Composite Block Wear-Resistant Materials Industry Development Status and Trend Analysis” released by Hua Jing Intelligence Network, China’s wear-resistant materials industry is collectively moving toward a new stage characterized by multifunctional integration and digital design. In the future, wear-resistant materials will not only strive for both “hardness” and “toughness,” but will also integrate intelligent features such as corrosion resistance, self-lubrication, and even real-time wear monitoring (with embedded sensors), thereby serving extensively in national strategic sectors such as deep-sea exploration and nuclear energy.