High Temperature Deformation of Harmonic Structure Designed CrMnFeCoNi High Entropy Alloy

The Harmonic Structure (HS) is a recently introduced concept that paves the way for engineering metallic materials to achieve superior mechanical performance. They consist of soft, coarse-grained regions surrounded in three dimensions by an interconnected network of hard, ultra-fine grained regions. In addition, from a structural materials point of view, high entropy alloys have attracted attention due to their unique mechanical properties. In the present study, the HS design was applied to a high entropy CrMnFeCoNi alloy (also called "Cantor alloy"). The HS-designed Cantor alloy was successfully fabricated by mechanical milling, which is one of the surface severe plastic deformation processes, and the subsequent sintering process. The mechanical properties of these HS and homogeneous (Homo) Cantor alloy compacts were investigated by high-temperature compression tests in the temperature range of room temperature (RT) and 1173K, under initial strain rates of 0.01 s-1, 0.001 s-1, and 0.0001 s-1. The stress-strain curves of the HS compacts showed a large initial increase in stress and then a rapid decrease with strain, while that of the Homo compact showed a gentle increase and a gradual decrease. EBSD observation of the deformed compacts revealed that the HS compacts were probably deformed not only by dynamic recrystallization, but also by grain boundary sliding during deformation. The strain rate sensitivity value m of the HS compacts was 0.541 (true strain: 0.2) at 1173 K. In other words, the HS compacts exhibited pseudo-superplastic deformation at these temperatures.