Tensile Behavior and Evolution of the Phases in the Al(10)Co(25)Cr(8)Fe(15)Ni(36)Ti(6) Compositionally Complex/High Entropy Alloy

Compositionally complex alloys, or high entropy alloys, are good candidates for applications at higher temperatures in gas turbines. After their introduction, the equiatomic Al(17)Co(17)Cr(17)Cu(17)Fe(17)Ni(17) (at.%) served as a starting material and a long optimization road finally led to the recently optimized Al(10)Co(25)Cr(8)Fe(15)Ni(36)Ti(6) (at.%) alloy, which shows promising mechanical properties. Investigations of the as-cast state and after different heat treatments focus on the evolution of the microstructure and provide an overview of some mechanical properties. The dendritic solidification provides two phases in the dendritic cores and two different ones in the interdendritic regions. Three of the four phases remain after heat treatments. Homogenization and subsequent annealing produce a γ-γ’ based microstructure, similar to Ni-based superalloys. The γ phase is Co-Cr-Fe rich and the γ’ phase is Al-Ni-Ti rich. The understanding of the mechanical behavior of the investigated alloy is supported and enhanced by the study of the different phases and their nanohardness measurements. The observations are compared with mechanical and microstructural data from commercial Ni-based superalloys, Co-based alloys, and Co-Ni-based alloys at the desired application temperature of ~800 °C.