Abstract
In this study, (Al0.5CrFeNiTi0.25)Nx high-entropy films are prepared by a reactive direct current (DC) magnetron sputtering at different N2 flow rates on silicon wafers. It is found that the structure of (Al0.5CrFeNiTi0.25)Nx high-entropy films is amorphous, with x = 0. It transforms from amorphous to a face-centered-cubic (FCC) structure with the increase of nitrogen content, while the bulk Al0.5CrFeNiTi0.25 counterpart prepared by casting features a body-centered-cubic (BCC) phase structure. The phase formation can be explained by the atomic size difference (δ). Lacking nitrogen, δ is approximately 6.4% for the five metal elements, which is relatively large and might form a BCC or ordered-BCC structure, while the metallic elements in this alloy system all have a trend to form nitrides like TiN, CrN, AlN, and FeN. Therefore, nitride components are becoming very similar in size and structure and solve each other easily, thus, an FCC (Al-Cr-Fe-Ni-Ti)N solid solution forms. The calculated value of δ is approximately 23% for this multicomponent nitride solid solution. The (Al0.5CrFeNiTi0.25)Nx films achieve a pronounced hardness and a Young’s modulus of 21.45 GPa and 253.8 GPa, respectively, which is obviously much higher than that of the as-cast Al0.5CrFeNiTi0.25 bulk alloys.
Highlights
High-entropy films (HEFs) are a brand-new type of alloy film, which has been developed recently based on the design concept of high-entropy alloys (HEAs) [1]
HEFs can be defined as multiple-component films with high-entropy mixing
The HEAs are composed of multi-principal-elements [2,3]
Summary
High-entropy films (HEFs) are a brand-new type of alloy film, which has been developed recently based on the design concept of high-entropy alloys (HEAs) [1]. Due to severe lattice distortion and solid solution strengthening, attributable to the multi-components, the HEAs show many excellent mechanical properties, such as high-strength, good ductility, and high-wear and corrosion resistances [1]. Many excellent properties of HEFs have been discovered and studied, such as high-wear resistance [13,14], high-corrosion resistance [15,16,17], diffusion-barriers effects [18,19,20], solar-thermal-conversion effects [10,21], plastic-deformation characteristics [22,23], Entropy 2018, 20, 624; doi:10.3390/e20090624 www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy
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