Wide-Temperature-Range Superelasticity in an Additively Manufactured Shape Memory Alloy

Additively manufactured superelastic components that operate across wide temperature ranges are attractive for aerospace, robotics, and reusable energy-absorbing systems. However, achieving sub-room-temperature tensile superelasticity while retaining reliable additive manufacturing processability remains challenging. Here, we address this challenge by decorating pre-alloyed Cu–Al–Mn powder with 2 at.% Ni. During laser powder bed fusion, this feedstock-level Ni addition improves laser absorption and densification, refines the solidification microstructure, and stabilizes the austenite by lowering the phase transformation temperature. The resulting alloy delivers bulk tensile superelasticity from −70 °C to 50 °C, together with a tensile strength of ∼1.3 GPa, an elongation of 9%, and a recoverable strain of ∼4%. This wide-temperature superelasticity is further retained in architected structures, enabling reusable energy absorption and adaptive load bearing across the same thermal window. These findings establish a potentially lower-cost feedstock route to additively manufactured superelastic metamaterials with a wide operating-temperature range for shape-adaptive and reusable load-bearing applications.