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Combinatorial Alloy Design: Renaissance in the Accelerated Development of High-Entropy Alloys

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Abstract

Combinatorial alloy design—an economical yet high-throughput alloy design approach, facilitates rapid screening of a wide range of compositions with limited material expenditure. The ever-growing demand for multi-functional modern materials’ necessitates the design of multi-component alloys that can cater to the requirements of end application, with targeted properties and ease of synthesis. To this end, we report the current trends in combinatorial alloy design approach that are available to develop a subset of multi-component alloys, namely high-entropy alloy (HEA) in both functionally tailored thin-film form and compositionally optimized bulk scale. The thin-film form synthesized by combinatorial magnetron sputtering approach enables generation of a library of compositions in a single-step process, i.e., developing multiple concentration gradients in a single reference substrate. While the identified, best performing compositions from the combinatorial library can then be scaled up to bulk form utilizing combinatorial vacuum induction melting route for application-oriented design and analysis. As an example, the bulk form of multi-component Fe70-xMnxCo10Cr15Cu5 (x = 10, 15, 20 at.%) HEA was developed by combinatorial vacuum induction melting route to explore the influence of Mn on phase formation and compare the same with calculation of phase diagram (CALPHAD)-based theoretical predictions. The hot-rolled alloys were subjected to bulk-scale phase analysis using X-ray diffraction, microstructure imaging by scanning electron microscopy, and chemical composition analysis by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy toward understanding the role of composition on the mechanical property variation in the developed alloys. Such a comprehensive approach would facilitate on the one hand rapid identification of novel, high-performance alloys, while on the other hand support the development of experimentally guided, compositionally tuned materials database for future design of multi-component alloys be it by machine learning or by conventional methods.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the funding support from Max-Planck Gesellschaft for establishing Max-Planck-India Partner Group at IIT Madras as well as from Defense Research and Development Organization through Contract for Acquisition of Research Services. KGP also acknowledges the funding support from Ministry of Human Resource and Development through the Institute of Eminence (IoE) initiative for establishing the center of Excellence in Correlative Microscopy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Correlative Microscopy Laboratory, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, 600036, India

    M. Sadhasivam, S. Pavan Kumar, Mainak Saha, Chinmoy Mahata & K. G. Pradeep

  2. Research Centre for Magnetic and Spintronic Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0047, Japan

    Mainak Saha

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  1. M. Sadhasivam
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  2. S. Pavan Kumar
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  5. K. G. Pradeep
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Correspondence to K. G. Pradeep.

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Sadhasivam, M., Kumar, S.P., Saha, M. et al. Combinatorial Alloy Design: Renaissance in the Accelerated Development of High-Entropy Alloys. Trans Indian Natl. Acad. Eng. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41403-024-00462-x

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