Brazing is a 5000-year-old joining process which still meets advanced joining challenges today. In brazing, components are joined by heating above the melting point of a filler metal placed between them; on solidification a joint is formed. It provides unique advantages over other joining methods, including the ability to join dissimilar material combinations (including metal-ceramic joints), with limited microstructural evolution; producing joints of relatively high strength which are often electrically and thermally conductive. Current interest in brazing is widespread with filler metal development key to enabling a range of future technologies including; fusion energy, Solid Oxide Fuel Cells and nanoelectronics, whilst also assisting the advancement of established fields, such as automotive lightweighting, by tackling the challenges associated with joining aluminium to steels. This review discusses the theory and practice of brazing, with particular reference to filler metals, and covers progress in, and opportunities for, advanced filler metal development.

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In the search for applications for alloys developed under the philosophy of the High Entropy Alloy (HEA)-type materials, the focus may be placed on applications where current alloys also use multiple components, albeit at lower levels than those found in HEAs. One such area, where alloys with complex compositions are already found, is in filler metals used for joining. In soldering (<450 °C) and brazing (>450 °C), filler metal alloys are taken above their liquidus temperature and used to form a metallic bond between two components, which remain both unmelted and largely unchanged throughout the process. These joining methods are widely used in applications from electronics to aerospace and energy, and filler metals are highly diverse, to allow compatibility with a broad range of base materials (including the capability to join ceramics to metals) and a large range of processing temperatures. Here, we review recent developments in filler metals relevant to High Entropy materials, and argue that such alloys merit further exploration to help overcome a number of current challenges that need to be solved for filler metal-based joining methods.