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Tailoring planar slip to achieve pure metal-like ductility in body-centred-cubic multi-principal element alloys

Nature Materials volume 22, pages 950–957 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Uniform tensile ductility (UTD) is crucial for the forming/machining capabilities of structural materials. Normally, planar-slip induced narrow deformation bands localize the plastic strains and hence hamper UTD, particularly in body-centred-cubic (bcc) multi-principal element high-entropy alloys (HEAs), which generally exhibit early necking (UTD < 5%). Here we demonstrate a strategy to tailor the planar-slip bands in a Ti-Zr-V-Nb-Al bcc HEA, achieving a 25% UTD together with nearly 50% elongation-to-failure (approaching a ductile elemental metal), while offering gigapascal yield strength. The HEA composition is designed not only to enhance the B2-like local chemical order (LCO), seeding sites to disperse planar slip, but also to generate excess lattice distortion upon deformation-induced LCO destruction, which promotes elastic strains and dislocation debris to cause dynamic hardening. This encourages second-generation planar-slip bands to branch out from first-generation bands, effectively spreading the plastic flow to permeate the sample volume. Moreover, the profuse bands frequently intersect to sustain adequate work-hardening rate (WHR) to large strains. Our strategy showcases the tuning of plastic flow dynamics that turns an otherwise-undesirable deformation mode to our advantage, enabling an unusual synergy of yield strength and UTD for bcc HEAs.

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Fig. 1: Atomic structure difference between aged- and WQ-T50 HEAs.
Fig. 2: Tensile properties of WQ- and aged-T50 HEAs.
Fig. 3: Microstructure evolution of aged-T50 HEAs during plastic deformation.
Fig. 4: Structure–property evolution in T50 HEAs on plastic deformation.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the published article and Supplementary Information and are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The computer codes are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Y.X. and Liang W. acknowledge support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. U2241234). Liang W. acknowledges support from China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant no. 2019M660482). J.D. acknowledges support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 12004294) and National Youth Talents Program. E.M. acknowledges National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 52231001) and the 111 Project (grant no. BP2018008). E.M. and J.D. thank the support by Center for Alloy Innovation and Design (CAID) and the HPC platform of Xi’an Jiaotong University. K.J. acknowledges support from National MCF Energy R&D Program (grant no. 2022YFE03120000). Y.R. acknowledges support from City University of Hong Kong (grant no. 9610533). S.Z. acknowledges support from the Key Project of Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (grant no. 20JCZDJC00440). The use of the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory was supported by the US Department of Energy (grant no. DE-AC02-06CH11357). Y.X. and Liang W. thank Yandong Wang at State Key Laboratory for Advanced Metals and Materials, University of Science and Technology Beijing, for the suggestion on material characterization and mechanism analysis, and Fang Zhang at Analysis and Testing Center, Beijing Institute of Technology, for help with aberration-corrected TEM and STEM experiments.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Liang Wang, Jun Ding.

Authors and Affiliations

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

    Liang Wang, Songshen Chen, Ke Jin, Qiuhong Zhang, Jiaxiang Cui, Benpeng Wang, Lu Wang & Yunfei Xue

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

    Liang Wang & Jun Liang

  3. Center for Alloy Innovation and Design (CAID), State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Jun Ding & En Ma

  4. Advance Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

    Ke Jin

  5. State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Bing Chen

  6. X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    Tianyi Li

  7. Department of Physics, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Yang Ren

  8. Center for Neutron Scattering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Yang Ren

  9. Tianjin Key Laboratory of Materials Laminating Fabrication and Interface Control Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, China

    Shijian Zheng & Kaisheng Ming

  10. Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Wenjun Lu & Junhua Hou

  11. Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanoscience, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

    Gang Sha

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  1. Liang Wang
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Contributions

Y.X. and E.M. conceived the ideas and supervised the project. Liang W., J.D. and Y.X. analysed the data. Liang W. and E.M. led the writing of the paper and the presentations in the figures. Liang W., S.C., J.C. and B.W. prepared the alloys and performed the mechanical property tests and scanning electron microscopy and EBSD observations. J.D. and B.C. conducted the DFT-based Monte Carlo simulations and MD simulations. Liang W., Q.Z. and K.J. performed the aberration-corrected STEM and TEM experiments on LCO and lattice distribution. Liang W., S.Z., K.M., W.L. and J.H. performed the TEM and STEM experiments on dislocation configurations. Liang W., T.L. and Y.R. conducted the SXRD and total-scattering tests. Lu W. and J.L. reaffirmed the structure characterization and mechanical properties. G.S. performed the 3D-APT experiments. All authors contributed to the discussion of the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yunfei Xue or En Ma.

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Nature Materials thanks Rajarshi Banerjee, E.-Wen Huang, M. Kramer and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Wang, L., Ding, J., Chen, S. et al. Tailoring planar slip to achieve pure metal-like ductility in body-centred-cubic multi-principal element alloys. Nat. Mater. 22, 950–957 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01517-0

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