Abstract
An equiatomic CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy (HEA) thin film coating has been successfully developed by high-vacuum Radio Frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. The deposition of a smooth and homogenous thin film with uniformly distributed equiaxed nanograins (grain size ~ 10 nm) was achieved through this technique. The thin film coating exhibits a high hardness of 6.8 ± 0.6 GPa, which is superior compared to its bulk counterpart owing to its nanocrystalline structure. Furthermore, it also shows good ductility through nanoindentation, which demonstrates its potential to serve as an alternative to traditional transition metal nitride or carbide coatings for applications in micro-fabrication and advanced coating technologies.
Highlights
In the past decades, binary (Ye Y. et al, 2015a; Li et al, 2018), ternary (Yao et al, 2015; Ye Y. et al, 2015b) and quaternary (Dang et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2017) transition metal nitride or carbide coatings have been well explored and applied in many industrial and engineering fields
Chemical composition of the Co, Cr, Fe, Ni and Mn is 19.3 at.%, 19.9 at.%, 19.1 at.%, 19.1 at.% and 22.6 at.%, of which the atomic ratio of Co: Cr: Fe: Ni: Mn the is very close to 1:1:1:1:1, and it is nearly identical with its bulk counterpart
Nanograined metals possess high strength and hardness due to the formation of nanocrystalline grains, which is beneficial for the mechanical enhancement of the high-entropy alloy (HEA) film (Lu et al, 2009; Fang et al, 2011)
Summary
Binary (Ye Y. et al, 2015a; Li et al, 2018), ternary (Yao et al, 2015; Ye Y. et al, 2015b) and quaternary (Dang et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2017) transition metal nitride or carbide coatings have been well explored and applied in many industrial and engineering fields These coatings possess very high hardness, but their brittle property has impeded its application in certain areas, such as automotive parts, mold, tools etc. Solid-solution hardening (high strength) with good ductility can be achieved when the solid-solution phase exhibits a simple crystal structure (Otto et al, 2013), e.g., face-centered cubic (FCC), with many slip systems. We propose a CrMnFeCoNi alloy thin film and study whether it can possess a high hardness and ductility as the bulk ones
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