High-entropy ceramic thin films; A case study on transition metal diborides

High-entropy materials often outperform their lower-entropy relatives in various aspects, such as thermal stability and fracture toughness. While there are extensive research activities in the field of high-entropy alloys, comparably little is performed for high-entropy ceramics, and especially for high-entropy diborides. Here we show, that not only the hardness of ZrB2 layers can be improved from 43.2 +/- 1.0 GPa to 45.8 +/- 1.0 GPa to 47.2 +/- 1.8 GPa through the formation of solid solution ternary diborides (Zr0.61Ti0.39B2) and high-entropy diborides (Zr0.23Ti0.20Hf0.19V0.14Ta0.24B2), respectively, but especially their thermal stability against structural rearrangements and decomposition towards the constituting binary diborides. (C) 2018 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.