This study presents an experimental and numerical investigation of the beneficial effect of higher conductivity materials in HP turbine nozzles. Most of the literature studies focus on the maximum temperature that a nozzle can withstand, whereas the effect of thermal gradients is often neglected. However thermal gradients have higher influence on the life of the components and they have to be given careful consideration. In this work it is shown that thermal gradients are reduced by using high conductivity materials and, as a consequence, the nozzles life is appreciably increased. A representative film cooled leading edge with an internal impingement plate was studied experimentally at Texas AM University. Two materials were used, namely polycarbonate and stainless steel, in order to highlight the impact of conduction on coolant effectiveness. Numerically conjugate heat transfer simulations have been carried out with an in house solver to analyse in detail the impact of conduction and internal convection. Both experimental and numerical results show that by increasing the conductivity in the solid region, the thermal gradients are strongly reduced. Numerically it is shown that using inserts of nickel-aluminide alloys in nozzles may reduce the thermal gradients from 3 to 4 times if compared to nowadays design. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.