High-content ductile coherent nanoprecipitates achieve ultrastrong high-entropy alloys

Liang, Yao -Jian; Wang, Linjing; Wen, Yuren; Cheng, Baoyuan; Wu, Qinli; Cao, Tangqing; Xiao, Qian; Xue, Yunfei; Sha, Gang; Wang, Yandong; Ren, Yang; Li, Xiaoyan; Wang, Lu; Wang, Fuchi; Cai, Hongnian

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06600-8

High-content ductile coherent nanoprecipitates achieve ultrastrong high-entropy alloys

Journal Article · Wed Oct 03 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Nature Communications

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06600-8· OSTI ID:1504263

Liang, Yao -Jian ^[1]; Wang, Linjing ^[1]; Wen, Yuren ^[2]; Cheng, Baoyuan ^[1]; Wu, Qinli ^[3]; Cao, Tangqing ^[1]; Xiao, Qian ^[1]; Xue, Yunfei ^[1]; Sha, Gang ^[3]; Wang, Yandong ^[4]; Ren, Yang ^[5]; Li, Xiaoyan ^[6]; Wang, Lu ^[1]; Wang, Fuchi ^[1]; Cai, Hongnian ^[1]

Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing (China)
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
Nanjing Univ. of Science and Technology, Nanjing (China)
Univ. of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing (China)
Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)

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. As a result, we find that this spinodal order-disorder nanostructure contributes to a strength increase of similar to 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%).

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); China Postdoctoral Science Foundation; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-06CH11357

OSTI ID:: 1504263

Journal Information:: Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 9; ISSN 2041-1723

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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