Researchers from Virginia Tech, Arizona State University and Iowa State University have received a $2 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop self-lubricating, wear-resistant metal alloys for extreme-temperature applications.
The project will use additive manufacturing alongside computational modelling, high-throughput testing and machine learning to identify alloys capable of maintaining structural strength while forming low-friction oxide surfaces during operation.
Wenjun (Rebecca) Cai, an associate professor in Virginia Tech’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Yao Fu, an associate professor in its Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, are leading the Virginia Tech research. Both are affiliated with Virginia Tech Made: The Center for Advanced Manufacturing.
The researchers are targeting applications including bearings, seals and turbine interfaces, where conventional lubrication becomes increasingly difficult as operating temperatures rise. Potential applications span aerospace propulsion, power generation, manufacturing equipment and defense systems.
According to Cai, conventional liquid lubricants fail at temperatures above roughly 600°C, while many traditional solid lubricants can oxidize or lose their effectiveness.
Rather than preventing oxidation altogether, the team wants to use it as part of the material’s functionality.
Turning oxidation into lubrication
The researchers plan to develop alloys with a strong metallic interior and a surface capable of forming a stable, low-shear oxide when exposed to high-temperature operating conditions.
If successful, this oxide could provide lubrication directly at the contact surface and potentially regenerate as the component continues operating.
“Our inspiration came from realizing that oxidation might provide the missing link,” said Cai. “If we can make the alloy strong internally but cause its surface to form a stable, low-shear oxide during operation, we can potentially achieve structural strength and lubrication in the same material.”
The team is investigating complex concentrated alloys (CCAs), which contain several principal elements rather than relying primarily on one base metal with smaller alloying additions.
This expanded compositional space allows researchers to manipulate properties including strength, phase stability, diffusion and oxidation behavior.
For the project, the challenge is effectively to design two interconnected materials: the structural metal underneath and the oxide that develops on its surface.
Cai said the project’s central hypothesis is that configurational entropy could help stabilize a strong bulk alloy while encouraging the formation of stable, low-shear spinel oxides at the surface.
The researchers will seek compositions that retain strength at elevated temperatures while providing the chemistry and diffusion behavior needed to generate these oxides.
Additive manufacturing becomes a materials design variable
Additive manufacturing will form part of a closed-loop development process connecting alloy design with physical testing.
Fu highlighted that AM can produce distinctive microstructures, defect populations, dislocation networks and residual stresses that influence diffusion and oxidation. As a result, the researchers can potentially optimize processing conditions and alloy composition together to encourage the desired surface behavior.
This makes additive manufacturing more than a fabrication method within the project. Processing conditions and the microstructures they generate become additional variables that researchers can potentially optimize alongside alloy composition.
The project will combine theory, simulation, additive manufacturing, high-throughput experimentation, materials characterization, tribology and machine learning.
Computational methods will first help narrow the large number of potential CCA compositions by predicting candidates likely to retain high-temperature strength, form stable spinel oxides and follow desirable oxidation pathways.
Selected alloys will then be manufactured and tested. Experimental results will be returned to the computational and machine-learning models, allowing predictions to be updated and subsequent experiments to focus on the most informative candidates.
This iterative approach is intended to reduce the amount of trial-and-error experimentation normally required when exploring large alloy composition spaces.
Building an open materials-discovery framework
The project is also intended to produce reusable tools for materials development, including open datasets, computational workflows, physics-guided machine-learning models and inverse-design methods.
These resources will connect alloy composition and processing with oxidation, mechanical properties, friction and wear, and could later be adapted to materials-discovery problems beyond self-lubricating alloys.
The researchers say successful alloys could ultimately reduce friction, wear and maintenance in extreme-temperature systems, although the project remains at an early research stage.
Additive manufacturing expands the high-temperature alloy design space
The Virginia Tech-led project follows other efforts to use additive manufacturing as part of the materials-development process for extreme-temperature applications.
In 2025, a University of Arizona-led team received $5 million to combine metal 3D printing and machine learning in the development of materials for hypersonic applications. Known as Mach-X, the project similarly treats alloy composition, manufacturing conditions and resulting material properties as interconnected variables rather than separating materials development from the printing process.
NASA has taken another approach with GRX-810, a nickel-cobalt-chromium oxide-dispersion-strengthened alloy developed at its Glenn Research Center for high-temperature additive manufacturing. The material was designed to address the limited availability of 3D printable alloys capable of maintaining performance under extreme heat, and has since progressed beyond laboratory development toward commercial production.
The new NSF-funded research adds tribological performance to this high-temperature materials challenge. Rather than focusing only on retaining mechanical properties under heat, the researchers want oxidation itself to generate a stable, low-shear surface that contributes to lubrication during operation.
Unlike GRX-810, however, the Virginia Tech-led project remains at an early research stage. The team has not yet reported a finalized alloy composition or quantitative high-temperature friction and wear performance.
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Feature Image shows Associate Professor Rebecca Cai (at left) and Associate Professor Yao Fu (at right). Photos via Virginia Tech.
