High Entropy Alloys: From Bulk Metallic Materials to Nanoparticles

High entropy alloys (HEAs) have shown many unique properties and have been attracting more attention during the past decade. However, the investigations of HEAs have mainly focused on bulk materials. Nanoparticles or quantum dots have shown outstanding properties and yielded very interesting and varied applications; thus, we believe that making nanoscale HEAs will generate more interesting phenomena. Preparing HEA nanoparticles is limited because of the difficulties in the simultaneous reduction of different precursors during the co-reduction reaction. In this article, we prepared crystalline HEA nanoparticles ranging from several to 20 nanometers in diameter. Composition analysis confirmed that all component elements distribute uniformly in a single nanoparticle. (C) The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International 2018