Highly printable, strong, and ductile ordered intermetallic alloy

Ordered intermetallic alloys are renowned for their impressive mechanical, chemical, and physical properties, making them appealing for various fields. However, practical applications of them have long been severely hindered due to their severe brittleness and poor fabricability. It is difficult to fabricate such materials into components with complex geometries through traditional subtractive manufacturing methods. Here, we proposed a strategy to solve these long-standing issues through the additive manufacturing of chemically complex intermetallic alloy (CCIMA) based on laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). The developed CCIMA exhibits good printability, enabling a crack-free microstructure with a low porosity of 0.005%. More importantly, a good combination of high tensile strength (~1.6 GPa) and large uniform elongation (~35%) can be achieved, which has not been reported in the existing additive-manufactured alloys. Such properties are attributed to the structural and chemical features of highly ordered superlattice grain decorated with disordered interfacial nanolayer, as well as dynamic evolutions and interactions of multiple dislocation substructures. These findings could provide references for developing high-performance intermetallic alloys and accelerating their practical applications. © 2025. The Author(s).