Enhanced high-temperature oxidation resistance of low-cost Fe-Cr-Ni medium entropy alloy by Ce-adulterated

Medium-entropy alloys (MEAs) and high-entropy alloys (HEAs) are good candidates for high-temperature applications, taking advantage of their exceptional thermal stability. However, most of them contain high-priced Co elements, which limited further promotion and application. Therefore, it is imperative to elaborate HEAs/MEAs with superb oxidation resistance and relatively low cost. An economically Fe-Cr-Ni MEA, which exhibits an outstanding high-temperature oxidation resistance, was developed by Ce-adulterated. The Ce-containing Fe-Cr-Ni MEA possessed a lower oxidation rate and a higher oxidative activation energy (461.4 kJ mol(-1), 14% increment compared with the reference MEA). The splendid high-temperature oxidation resistance primarily benefited from the protective oxide scales formed on the surface of MEA, which were denser, slow-growing, and well adherently. This research sheds light on exploiting low-cost MEAs with excellent resis-tance to oxidation for high-temperature applications. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

Medium-entropy alloys (MEAs) and high-entropy alloys (HEAs) are good candidates for high-temperature applications due to their exceptional thermal stability. However, the presence of expensive cobalt elements in most of these alloys has limited their further promotion and application. Therefore, it is crucial to develop low-cost MEAs with superb oxidation resistance.