Ultrastrong and ductile (CoCrNi)94Ti3Al3 medium-entropy alloys via introducing multi-sacle heterogeneous structures

The coarsening-grained single-phase face-centered cubic (fcc) medium-entropy alloys (MEAs) normally exhibit insufficient strength for some engineering applications. Here, superior mechanical properties with ultimate tensile strength of 1.6 GPa and fracture strain of 13.1% at ambient temperature have been achieved in a (CoCrNi)94Ti3Al3 MEA by carefully architecting the multi-scale heterogeneous structures. Electron microscopy characterization indicates that the superior mechanical properties mainly originated from the favorable heterogeneous fcc matrix (1–40 µm) and coherent spherical γ' precipitate (10–100 nm), together with a high number density of crystalline defects (2–10 nm), including dislocations, small stacking faults, Lomer–Cottrell locks, and ultrafine deformation twins.National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2020YFB0311300ZL); National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52071343)