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Deformation response of high entropy alloy nanowires

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Abstract

This paper reports atomistic simulation studies of tensile and compressive behavior of nanowires of a model quinary high entropy face-centered cubic (FCC) alloy. The simulations employ empirical interatomic potentials and use massively parallel molecular dynamics techniques at the atomistic level to study the deformation mechanisms. The studies consider pristine cylindrical nanowires oriented along various crystallographic directions. The focus is the role that local composition fluctuations in the random alloy plays in the deformation response. The deformation behavior observed for the complex random alloy is compared with a corresponding “average atom” material that has the same average properties but no local compositional fluctuations. In all cases, deformation is governed by dislocations emitted from the free surface. Twinning was also found, depending on the crystallographic orientation and loading mode. We show that for all orientations, the high entropy alloy (HEA) wires show the onset of plasticity at lower stress levels than the average atom material. However, after the onset of plasticity, the HEA presents a higher strength, mostly driven by the fact that the dislocations emitted from the surface do not glide as easily in the random alloy as they do in the average atom material.

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Acknowledgements

This work (DF) was supported by the National Science Foundation, Division of Materials Research (Grant number 1507846). CJR acknowledges support by SiiP-UNCuyo. The simulations in this paper were run using the LAMMPS software package (lammps.sandia.gov) at TOKO-FCEN-UNCuyo HPC cluster and on a Tesla Titan X Pascal donated by the NVIDIA Corporation. Figures were generated using OVITO (www.ovito.org). The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Funding

This study was funded by NSF, Division of Materials Research (Grant number 1507846).

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  1. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Básicas, CONICET - UNCuyo and Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales UNCuyo, 5500, Mendoza, Argentina

    Carlos J. Ruestes

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA

    Diana Farkas

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Ruestes, C.J., Farkas, D. Deformation response of high entropy alloy nanowires. J Mater Sci 56, 16447–16462 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-021-06314-1

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