In the course of rising requirements for high temperate materials used i.e. in jet engines and stronger regulations concerning the reduction of CO2 emissions new high temperature materials as well as suitable manufacturing technologies for advanced materials need to be developed. Recently, the Additive Manufacturing technology Laser Metal Deposition has gained a lot of attention for the processing of crack prone high temperature materials such as Ni-based super alloys or intermetallics.

Within this contribution, a study on LMD of a graded transition from binary ß-NiAl to Ni50Al42Ta8, recent developments in the processing of high entropy alloys and multi-material processing of Merl71 + CM247 among other material combinations for different applications will be presented.

By means of multi-material buildups, cost-intensive alloys could be only used in high-loaded areas of the part, whereas the remaining part could be fabricated with cheaper compositions. The selection of combined materials strongly depends on the requested thermophysical but also mechanical properties. Within this contribution, examples (e.g., used in the turbine business) show how alloys can be arranged to fit together, e.g., in terms of a well-chosen coefficient of thermal expansion. As can be seen in nature, the multi-material usage can be characterized by sharp intersections from one material to the other (e.g., in case of a thin corrosion protection), but also by graded structures enabling a smoother material transition (e.g., in case of dissimilar materials which are joined together without defects). Another possibility is the simultaneous placement of several materials, e.g., hard carbide particles placed in a more ductile matrix composition. These particles can be varied in size (e.g., TiC versus WC). Also the ratio between carbides and matrix alloy can be adjusted depending on its application. Especially, nozzle-based free form fabrication technologies, e.g., laser metal deposition, ena-ble the utilization of more than one material. In addition, results of multi-material processes are shown. Finally, this work focuses on different applications, mainly on power generation, but also for medical technology or wear resistant components.