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Microstructures and mechanical properties of Ta–Nb–Zr–Ti–Al refractory high entropy alloys with varying Ta/Ti ratios

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Abstract

The refractory high entropy alloys (RHEAs) containing disordered body-centered cubic (BCC) and ordered BCC (B2) structures often exhibit high strength but low ductility at room temperature, even in the compressive tests. In this study, (Ta25-xNb25Zr25Ti25+x)95Al5 (x = 0, 5, 10) RHEAs are fabricated to investigate the compositional dependence of the microstructures and mechanical properties. All the three alloys exhibit a single BCC structure at the as-cast and solution-treated states, while the basket weave-like microstructures consisting of cuboidal and strip-like phases are formed after aging at 600 °C. The microstructure of the aged alloys is sensitive to the compositions: only disordered BCC1 + BCC2 dual phases are observed in the (Ta25Nb25Zr25Ti25)95Al5 alloy; additional B2 phases are formed by replacing 5 at% Ta with Ti; a complex microstructure containing BCC1 + BCC2 + B2 + Omega phases are identified in the (Ta15Nb25Zr25Ti35)95Al5 alloy. Although replacing Ta with Ti results in a reduction of compressive yield strength from 1762 to 1243 MPa, the fracture strain is greatly enhanced from 7.3 to 44.3%, indicating that the strength-ductility balance can be tuned to a large extent in this RHEA system.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11905008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Ya-Guang Dong, Shang Chen, Nan-Nan Jia, Qiu-Hong Zhang, Liang Wang, Yun-Fei Xue & Ke Jin

  2. Institute of Advanced Structure Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 10081, China

    Liang Wang

  3. Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Ke Jin

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  1. Ya-Guang Dong
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Contributions

Ya-Guang Dong wrote the draft; Ya-Guang Dong, Shang Chen, Nan-Nan Jia, and Qiu-Hong Zhang collected the data; Liang Wang, Yun-Fei Xue, and Ke Jin contributed to conceive the idea of the study. All authors contributed to the writing the revisions.

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Correspondence to Ke Jin.

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Dong, YG., Chen, S., Jia, NN. et al. Microstructures and mechanical properties of Ta–Nb–Zr–Ti–Al refractory high entropy alloys with varying Ta/Ti ratios. Tungsten 3, 406–414 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42864-021-00111-8

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