Abstract

Precipitation-hardening high-entropy alloys (PH-HEAs) with good strength−ductility balances are a promising candidate for advanced structural applications. However, current HEAs emphasize near-equiatomic initial compositions, which limit the increase of intermetallic precipitates that are closely related to the alloy strength. Here we present a strategy to design ultrastrong HEAs with high-content nanoprecipitates by phase separation, which can generate a near-equiatomic matrix in situ while forming strengthening phases, producing a PH-HEA regardless of the initial atomic ratio. Accordingly, we develop a non-equiatomic alloy that utilizes spinodal decomposition to create a low-misfit coherent nanostructure combining a near-equiatomic disordered face-centered-cubic (FCC) matrix with high-content ductile Ni3Al-type ordered nanoprecipitates. We find that this spinodal order–disorder nanostructure contributes to a strength increase of ~1.5 GPa (>560%) relative to the HEA without precipitation, achieving one of the highest tensile strength (1.9 GPa) among all bulk HEAs reported previously while retaining good ductility (>9%).

Details

Title
High-content ductile coherent nanoprecipitates achieve ultrastrong high-entropy alloys
Author
Yao-Jian, Liang 1 ; Wang, Linjing 1 ; Yuren Wen 2 ; Cheng, Baoyuan 1 ; Wu, Qinli 3 ; Cao, Tangqing 1 ; Xiao, Qian 1 ; Xue, Yunfei 1 ; Sha, Gang 3 ; Wang, Yandong 4 ; Yang, Ren 5 ; Li, Xiaoyan 6 ; Wang, Lu 1 ; Wang, Fuchi 1 ; Cai, Hongnian 1 

 School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China 
 Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 
 Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanoscience, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China 
 State Key Laboratory for Advanced Metals and Materials, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China 
 X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA 
 Center for Advanced Mechanics and Materials, Applied Mechanics Laboratory, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China 
Pages
1-8
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Oct 2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2116054873
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.