High-Entropy Alloys: Potential Candidates for High-Temperature Applications - An Overview

Multi-principal elemental alloys, commonly referred to as high-entropy alloys (HEAs), are a new class of emerging advanced materials with novel alloy design concept. Unlike the design of conventional alloys, which is based on one or at most two principal elements, the design of HEA is based on multi-principal elements in equal or near-equal atomic ratio. The advent of HEA has revived the alloy design perception and paved the way to produce an ample number of compositions with different combinations of promising properties for a variety of structural applications. Among the properties possessed by HEAs, sluggish diffusion and strength retention at elevated temperature have caught wide attention. The need to develop new materials for high-temperature applications with superior high-temperature properties over superalloys has been one of the prime concerns of the high-temperature materials research community. The current article shows that HEAs have the potential to replace Ni-base superalloys as the next generation high-temperature materials. This review focuses on the phase stability, microstructural stability, and high-temperature mechanical properties of HEAs. This article will be highly beneficial for materials science and engineering community whose interest is in the development and understanding of HEAs for high-temperature applications.