The reporter learned from the Space Application Engineering and Technology Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on the 3rd that the research on high-performance refractory alloys carried out by the academician team of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Wei Bingbo, at the China Space Station, has recently successfully obtained the key thermophysical properties of refractory alloy melts, and has made a number of new scientific discoveries in space solidification preparation, which provides an important foundation for China's scientific theory research on space materials and the preparation of new high-performance refractory alloy materials. Relevant achievements have been published in international academic journals such as Advanced Materials. High performance refractory alloys are special rare metal materials with characteristics such as ultra-high temperature and high activity. However, research on refractory alloys in ground environments has long been constrained by conditions such as gravity and containers, making it difficult to accurately determine the liquid properties of refractory alloys and prepare them through rapid solidification synthesis. On April 29, 2021, the containerless material experimental cabinet was launched into space with the Tianhe core module. Zhang Wei, a researcher at the Space Application Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Application Development Center, said, "The experimental cabinet uses the electric field force provided by the electrostatic field to keep the material samples in a stable suspension state in the vacuum environment, avoid the impact of contact with the container wall, and can carry out deep supercooling solidification and thermophysical rationality research of metal, non-metal and other containers." Since April 2021, academician Wei Bingbo's team has prepared more than 10 kinds of hundreds of high-performance refractory alloy samples, and has successively conducted six batches of on orbit experiments in the container free material experimental cabinet of the China Space Station, successfully completing important experiments such as electrostatic suspension, heating and melting, cooling, supercooling, solidification, and thermophysical property determination of refractory alloys under microgravity conditions. "We have discovered a series of new achievements, mainly including the discovery of the vortex shaped special microstructure of microgravity droplets' solidification, elucidating the dynamic laws of microgravity solidification shrinkage, revealing the inherent mechanism of eutectic alloy decoupling growth under the joint action of microgravity and container free, and realizing the dual regulation of microstructure and macroscopic morphology of solidified alloys in space environment." Professor Wang Haipeng from the School of Physical Science and Technology at Northwestern Polytechnical University said. The research on space materials science in China began in 1986, and the comprehensive construction of the Chinese space station opened up broader prospects for the development of space materials science. Academician Wei Bingbo, Chief Scientist in the field of space materials science in China's manned spaceflight engineering, said, "In the future, we will definitely achieve more internationally leading achievements, utilize the special characteristics of the space environment to prepare or synthesize new materials, and transform them into new productive forces, better serving the construction of a strong science and technology country." (Xinhua News Agency)