Abstract

The complex interplay between competing phase stabilities of FCC, L12, BCC, and B2 phases in the Al0.25CoFeNi (7Al-31Co-31Fe-31Ni in at. %) high entropy alloy (HEA) leads to non-classical phase transformation pathways and resultant novel microstructures. Specifically, the competition between the homogenous precipitation of L12 and heterogenous precipitation of BCC/B2 can be studied at a temperature of 500 °C in the Al0.25CoFeNi alloy. Upon isothermally annealing the single FCC phase microstructure of this HEA at 500 °C up to 50 h, the transformation initiates with the formation of a transient ordered L12 phase with minor Ni–Al enrichment, which is far-from equilibrium, as revealed by atom probe tomography, and can be considered non-classical nucleation. The near equilibrium L12 phase eventually replaces the transient L12 during continued annealing at the same temperature. However, the resultant FCC + L12 microstructure is metastable because the true equilibrium for the Al0.25CoFeNi alloy at 500 °C is a mixture of L12 + B2 phases, as revealed by solution thermodynamics modeling. The higher nucleation barrier for the BCC-based ordered B2 phase coupled with the slower kinetics at 500 °C leads to the homogeneous precipitation of L12, while the B2 phase appears to sluggishly grow from grain boundaries acting as heterogeneous nucleation sites.

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