The use of aggressive atmospheres at high temperatures spurs the development of new materials and composites able to resist in such environments.

Even “classical” chromia- or alumina-scale-forming steels need some improvement to better behave in specific atmospheres; interconnects used in solid oxide electrolyzer cells and FeCrAl alloys immersed in liquid lead represent recent developments of those well-known materials.

Intermetallics, as bulk materials or coatings, have been developed for their particular properties at high temperature. As coatings, they typically require high-temperature processing conditions that are open for optimization. Research focused on improvements of micro-alloyed steels, development of new types of coatings (using flame spray technology), progress in powder metallurgy, and the use of self-healing ceramic matrix composites provides strong evidence for the huge activity within the scientific community in the fields of new materials and composites.

Among them, high-entropy alloys are the most recent and probably the most promising because of their specific properties given by their constitution of equimolar element additions.

The following key papers were presented at the 9th international conference on High Temperature Corrosion and Protection of Materials (HTCPM2016), which was held at Les Embiez Island, France, on the 15–20th of May 2016.