Achieving high tensile strength and ductility in refractory alloys by tuning electronic structure

Nature Materials (2026)Cite this article The energy efficiency of heat engines (gas and steam turbines) for electricity production and propulsion is determined by the Carnot cycle and scales with operating temperature. Commercial nickel- and cobalt-based superalloys melt near 1,500 °C and rapidly lose mechanical strength beyond 1,000 °C. Refractory metals melt well above 2,000 °C but have inherent manufacturability challenges that are barriers to adoption, such as high ductile-to-brittle transition temperatures. Using density functional theory-guided design, we demonstrate tailored local lattice distortions that promote phase-stable, non-equiatomic refractory concentrated solid solutions with both high ductility and strength. We exemplify this for single-phase, body-centred cubic Nb4Ta4V3Ti that exhibits castability, excellent room-temperature tensile yield strength (∼1 GPa) and ductility (approaching 20% uniform strain), and exceptional high-temperature tensile strength (500 MPa at 1,000 °C). These findings illustrate a path for designing materials that hold great potential for advancing next-generation technologies such as Generation IV fission reactors, first-generation fusion-plasma reactors, and more efficient gas turbines for electricity generation and propulsion.This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription 27,99 € / 30 days cancel any timeSubscribe to this journal Receive 12 print issues and online access 251,40 € per yearonly 20,95 € per issueBuy this article39,95 €Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkoutAll relevant data are provided in the Supplementary Information. Raw data can be made available upon request.No unique codes were developed for the purpose of this work; all codes used are documented in publications cited in this paper. 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Sandia National Laboratories is a multiprogramme laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the US DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525. Financial support for ultrahigh-temperature tensile testing was provided by D. Shifler and the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) under grant number N000141812180. This paper describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the US DOE or the US Government.Dishant BeniwalPresent address: X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USADivision of Materials Science and Engineering, Ames National Laboratory, Ames, IA, USAHailong Huang, Prashant Singh, Duane D. Johnson, Gaoyuan Ouyang, Luke Gaydos, Trevor Riedemann, Andrew B. Kustas, Ryan T. Ott & Nicolas ArgibayDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USADuane D. Johnson, Luke Gaydos & Nicolas ArgibayMetallurgical and Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar, IndiaDishant Beniwal & Pratik K. RayDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USATirthesh Ingale, Vishal Soni, Rajarshi Banerjee & Thomas W. ScharfMaterial, Physical, and Chemical Science Center, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USAPing Lu, Frank W. DelRio & Andrew B. KustasRTX Technology Research Center, East Hartford, CT, USAJohn A. Sharon & Ryan DeaconDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USASyed I. A. Jalali, Michael Patullo & Kevin J. HemkerDepartment of Materials Science & Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USASharon Park & Kevin J. HemkerSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarH.H. contributed to all aspects of the experimental work, data analysis, and interpretation, writing, and editing. P.S. and D.D.J. contributed to all aspects of the theory and computation work, conception, data analysis and interpretation, writing, and editing. D.B. and P.K.R. contributed to data curation and visualization. T.I., V.S., T.W.S. and R.B. performed SEM and EBSD analysis of deformed microstructures and APT, related data analysis and interpretation, and writing. G.O. contributed to materials synthesis and processing, mechanical testing, data analysis, and writing. L.G. and T.R. contributed to materials synthesis and processing, mechanical testing, and analysis, and writing. P.L. performed TEM analysis and contributed to data interpretation and writing. F.W.D. performed nanoindentation testing and contributed to writing. A.B.K. and R.T.O. contributed to data analysis and interpretation, editing and project management. J.A.S. and R.D. performed tensile sample preparation for high-temperature testing, contributed to analysis and interpretation, and writing. S.I.A.J., M.P., S.P. and K.J.H. performed high-temperature tensile testing and contributed to data analysis, interpretation and writing. N.A. contributed to conception, analysis and interpretation, writing, editing and project management.Correspondence to Nicolas Argibay.The authors declare no competing interests.Nature Materials thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.Supplementary Figs. 1–12 and Tables 1–4.DFT results spreadsheet.Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.Reprints and permissionsHuang, H., Singh, P., Johnson, D.D. et al. Achieving high tensile strength and ductility in refractory alloys by tuning electronic structure. Nat. Mater. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02464-8Download citationReceived: 23 April 2025Accepted: 05 December 2025Published: 26 January 2026Version of record: 26 January 2026DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02464-8Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative