Structural Stability of Titanium-Based High-Entropy Alloys Assessed Based on Changes in Grain Size and Hardness

Abstract

The thermal stability of the grain structure and mechanical properties of the high-entropy two-phase TiCoCrFeMn alloy produced by powder metallurgy, assessed based on microhardness measurements, was analyzed in this work. For this purpose, material obtained via sintering using the U-FAST method was subjected to long-term heating at a temperature of 1000 °C for up to 1000 h in an argon atmosphere. For homogenization times of 1, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 1000 h, grain size changes in the identified phase components of the matrix were assessed, and microhardness measurements were conducted using the Vickers method. It has been shown that the changes in the analyzed parameters are closely correlated with non-monotonic modifications in the chemical composition. It was found that the tested alloy achieved structural stability after 100 h of annealing. A stable grain size was obtained in the BCC solid solution of approximately 2 µm and the two-phase BCC+C14 mixture of roughly 0.4 µm. Long-term heating for up to 1000 h caused the grain structure to grow to 2.7 µm and 0.7 µm, respectively, with a simultaneous decrease in hardness from 1065 HV to 1000 HV. The chromium and titanium diffusion coefficient values responsible for forming the BCC solid solution and the Laves C14 phase, including the material matrix, were also determined at this level to be DCr = 1.28 × 10−19 (m2·s−1) and DTi = 1.04 × 10−19 (m2·s−1), demonstrating the sluggish diffusion effect typical of high-entropy alloys.