| Abstract Scope |
The multi-principal-element design concept has created exciting opportunities for the development of compositionally complex carbides (CCCs), also known as high-entropy carbides, for extreme environments encountered in advanced nuclear energy and aerospace systems. By expanding the compositional space available for ceramic design, CCCs provide new pathways for tailoring physical, thermal, mechanical, and chemical properties within single-phase solid solutions.
The unique behavior of CCCs is associated with compositional complexity, atomic-scale disorder, lattice distortion, and their influence on defect evolution and thermal transport. Since the first CCC was synthesized in 2018, this emerging class of ceramics has attracted growing attention for cutting-edge applications requiring exceptional thermal stability, mechanical performance, and irradiation tolerance.
This presentation will provide an overview of recent advances in the processing, characterization, and performance evaluation of CCCs in extreme high-temperature and irradiation environments. Particular emphasis will be placed on radiation damage behavior under heavy-ion and proton irradiation, providing insights into phase stability, irradiation-induced defect evolution, irradiation hardening, and thermal transport. Emerging opportunities and remaining challenges will be discussed to assess whether CCCs can serve as a new generation of enabling ceramics for extreme environments. |