Deformation behavior of high-entropy alloy system Al – Co – Cr – Fe – Ni achieved by wire-arc additive manufacturing

Abstract

A non-equiatomic high-entropy alloy (HEA) of the Al – Co – Cr – Fe – Ni system was obtained using wire-arc additive manufacturing technology in the atmosphere of pure argon. The initial wire had 3 conductors with different chemical composition: pure aluminum wire (Al ≈ 99.95 %), chromium-nickel wire (Cr ≈ 20 %, Ni ≈ 80 %), and cobalt alloy wire (Co ≈ 17 %, Fe ≈ 54 %, Ni ≈ 29 %). The resulting sample of high-entropy alloy was a parallelepiped consisting of 20 deposited layers in height and 4 layers in thickness. The alloy had the following elemental composition, detected by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy: aluminum (35.67 ± 1.34 at. %), nickel (33.79 ± 0.46 at. %), iron (17.28 ± 1.83 at. %), chromium (8.28 ± 0.15 at. %) and cobalt (4.99 ± 0.09 at. %). Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the source material has a dendritic structure and contains particles of the second phase at grain boundaries. Element distribution maps obtained by mapping methods have shown that grain volumes are enriched in aluminum and nickel, while grain boundaries contain chromium and iron. Cobalt is distributed in the crystal lattice of the resulting HEA quasi-uniformly. It is shown that during tensile tests, the material was destroyed by the mechanism of intra-grain cleavage. The formation of brittle cracks along the boundaries and at the junctions of grain boundaries, i.e., in places containing inclusions of the second phases, is revealed. It was suggested that one of the reasons for the increased fragility of HEA, produced by wire-arc additive manufacturing, is revealed uneven distribution of elements in microstructure of the alloy and also the presence in material volume of discontinuities of various shapes and sizes.