The Future of High-Entropy Alloys: Manufacturing, Processing, Design, and Functional Applications

High-entropy alloys (HEAs), multi-principal-element alloys composed of five or more elements in near-equimolar or tailored proportions, have long been regarded as one of the most promising classes of next-generation metallic materials because of their exceptional compositional flexibility and the broad spectrum of achievable properties. Over the past decade, HEAs have attracted tremendous research interest and have become a major focus in materials science, driven by their unusual combinations of strength, ductility, corrosion resistance, and thermal stability that are difficult to achieve in conventional single-principal-element alloys. Despite these rapid advances, HEAs remain a relatively young family of materials with enormous opportunities for further scientific discovery and technological innovation, spanning composition space that is still largely unexplored. This Research Topic aims to bring together researchers and pioneers in the field of HEAs to discuss the future of high-entropy alloys: where the field has come from, where it is heading, and what will determine whether HEAs move from laboratory curiosities to materials deployed in real engineering systems. As a long-term academic forum, this Research Topic seeks to provide a forum for exchanging new ideas, reporting cutting-edge discoveries, and facilitating the timely dissemination of the latest advances across the HEAs community, connecting alloy designers, process engineers, characterization specialists, and application-focused researchers who do not always publish in the same venues. We welcome original research articles, reviews and perspectives covering all aspects of high-entropy alloys, from fundamental alloy design through to manufacturing readiness, with a special emphasis on the emerging functional applications that are pushing HEAs beyond their traditional structural-materials origins. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:- Alloy design and processing: Compositional design of single-phase and multi-phase HEAs, additive manufacturing, casting, powder metallurgy, and thermomechanical processing. - Microstructure and advanced characterization: Advanced and multimodal characterization techniques to resolve HEA phase behavior, short-range order, precipitation, and interface structure. - Mechanical and high-temperature performance: Strength-ductility trade-offs, deformation mechanisms, and performance under sustained high-temperature service. - Extreme-environment structural applications: HEAs for nuclear environments (irradiation resistance) and aerospace structural applications. - Computational and data-driven materials design: Thermodynamic modelling, machine-learning-guided alloy discovery, and high-throughput screening. - Emerging functional applications: Catalysis, thermoelectric materials, soft magnetic materials, electromagnetic wave absorption, biomedical materials, and energy-related systems. Topic editors: Lisong Zhu, Zhiyang Wang, Da Sun Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84650/the-future-of-high-entropy-alloys-manufacturing-processing-design-and-functional-applications