Powder Metallurgy of High-Entropy Alloy

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, the high-entropy alloys (HEAs), medium entropy alloys and/or multi-principal element alloys have attracted significant interest, mainly due to distinctive properties resulting from the novelty of their basic design concept. This is coming from stabilization of the disordered phase and, therefore, to suppression of ordered intermetallics formation by maximizing the configurational entropy. This strategy has, indeed, been shown to produce some stable single-phase fcc and bcc alloys solid solution. However, the majority of HEAs studied so far have been proven to form intermetallic phases in specific conditions.

The HEAs’ design concept opens potential for investigations on the unexplored compositional range of multi-component alloys. Up to date, HEAs have demonstrated promising capability for industrial applications, mainly thanks to some of their remarkable properties, such as unique high combination of strength and ductility even at low temperatures, high temperature strength, high wear resistance, quite good thermal stability, satisfying corrosion resistance, etc.

HEAs are generally fabricated by casting, however, this way is subjected to some processing problems which may be detrimental for the final material. Alternatively, powder metallurgy (PM) has been proven to be a reliable and not too expensive method capable of relatively easy and efficient production of HEAs. Compared to casting, PM requires lower temperatures for its processing, since it can be produced through solid state sintering. Nevertheless, there are open problems to be fixed, e.g. oxides and/or other secondary phase particles formation, routes to optimise microstructure relating to HEAs performance under mechanical loading etc.

In this Special Issue, articles will be invited that focus on separate steps of mechanical alloying and HEAs powder preparation and characterisation methods, their influence on sinterability by different techniques and the final materials’ performance both from the powder stage and/or compaction stadium. Fast and low-cost processes especially remain of interest, being fully controllable and with a high implementation potential.

Prof. Ivo Dlouhý
Dr. Hynek Hadraba
Guest Editors

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• High-entropy alloy
• multicomponent alloy
• mechanical alloying
• microstructure
• strength
• fracture resistance
• wear resistance
• temperature effects
• applications