Abstract
Single-phase concentrated solid-solution alloys (SP-CSAs), including high entropy alloys (HEAs), are compositionally complex but structurally simple, and provide a playground of tailoring material properties through modifying their compositional complexity. The recent progress in understanding the compositional effects on the energy and mass transport properties in a series of face-centered-cubic SP-CSAs is the focus of this review. Relatively low electrical and thermal conductivities, as well as small separations between the interstitial and vacancy migration barriers have been generally observed, but largely depend on the alloying constituents. We further discuss the impact of such intrinsic transport properties on their irradiation response; the linkage to the delayed damage accumulation, slow defect aggregation, and suppressed irradiation induced swelling and segregation has been presented. We emphasize that the number of alloying elements may not be a critical factor on both transport properties and the defect behaviors under ion irradiations. The recent findings have stimulated novel concepts in the design of new radiation-tolerant materials, but further studies are demanded to enable predictive models that can quantitatively bridge the transport properties to the radiation damage.
Introduction
High entropy alloys (HEAs) have gained increasing research attention since proposed in 2004 (Cantor et al., ; Yeh et al., ; Guo and Liu, ; Senkov et al., ; Lucas et al., ). Different from conventional alloys (e.g., steels and Ni-based superalloys), HEAs contain multiple alloying elements (usually more than four) in equal or near equal concentrations but form simple structures. The outstanding properties for potential structural and mechanical applications have attracted the majority of investigations on HEAs, including good thermal stability, high fracture toughness, good creep behavior, as well as strong resistance to wear, oxidation and corrosion, as been comprehensively reviewed in literatures such as Zhang et al. () and Miracle and Senkov (). Another important research focus on HEAs is their transport properties. For example, the so-called “sluggish diffusion” effect, a mass transport property, has been considered one of the core effects of HEAs, responsible to the outstanding high temperature properties (Tsai et al., ; Dabrowa et al., ; Vaidya et al., ). In addition, interesting electrical transport properties such as superconductivity (Koželj et al., ) and quantum critical behavior (Sales et al., , ) have been discovered, and the HEAs have been considered promising in functional applications such as thermoelectric materials (Shafeie et al., ; Fan et al., ) and soft ferromagnetic materials (Zhang et al., ). Furthermore, recent studies have linked the mass and energy transport properties to the enhanced irradiation resistance (Zhang et al., ; Lu et al., ; Zhang Y. et al., ). Different from the traditional design strategies of irradiation tolerant alloys that usually introduce extrinsic defect sinks, such as grain boundary, secondary phases, and nano particles (Ukai and Fujiwara, ; Was, ; Garner, ), HEAs allow the focus on the effects of intrinsic properties determined by the major alloying elements on irradiation response, as considered a new path of designing radiation resistant alloys.
Although the early studies of HEAs have mainly targeted on the alloys containing five or more elements, evidence has suggested that their excellent properties do not necessarily require the large number of alloying elements. For example, the mechanical properties (e.g., strength, ductility, and fracture toughness) of ternary alloy NiCoCr, a so-called medium entropy alloy, have been reported superior to those of NiCoFeCrMn (Gludovatz et al., ). In addition, sluggish diffusion have also been found not merely related to the number of elements (Zhang C. et al., ; Jin et al., ). Thus, the studies of HEAs have been gradually broadened to a more general family—single-phase concentrated solid-solution alloys (SP-CSAs).
Ni-containing SP-CSAs in a face-centered cubic (FCC) structure form a family of alloys that enables varying the number, type, and concentration of alloying elements in a wide range without changing the structure, and thus an ideal model system for studying the effects of compositional complexity (Wu et al., ; Miracle and Senkov, ). This review summarizes the recent progress in understanding the compositional effects on the intrinsic transport properties, and its connection to the irradiation response: Section Electrical and Thermal Transport Properties summarizes the recent results on electrical resistivity and thermal conductivity in SP-CSAs, and compared them with some other transition metal alloys. In section Mass Transport Properties: Atomic Diffusion Behavior, Diffusion and Defect Dynamics in SP-CSAs are discussed and the concept of “sluggish diffusion” is clarified. In section Irradiation Resistance, experimental results of ion irradiation induced defect evolution at low, room and elevated temperatures in SP-CSAs are reviewed. In section Linkage Between the Transport Properties and Irradiation Response, present understanding on how such irradiation response is correlated to their intrinsic transport properties are discussed.
Electrical and thermal transport properties
Electrical resistivity
Extensive measurements have been performed in the early years on the electrical resistivity of binary alloys, the simplest SP-CSAs, with a number of elemental combinations, see e.g., Ho et al. (). Later on, Ni-Fe-Cr system has been one of the most studied ternary systems, probably due to their highly tunable magnetic phases and their importance in many commercial alloys, e.g., stainless steels (Banerjee and Raychaudhuri, ; Nath and Majumdar, ; Chakraborty and Majumdar, ). High electrical resistivity was proposed as feature of HEA in its early development stage in 2006, with potential application of high frequency communication materials (Wu et al., ; Yeh, ). Nonetheless, NiCoFeCrAlx was among the first HEAs with systematic electrical resistivity measurements reported a few years after then (Chou et al., ; Kao et al., ). In its FCC phase, the electrical resistivity increases with Al concentrations, in the range of ~100–150 μΩ cm. Recently, the electrical resistivity of a series of Ni-containing FCC SP-CSAs from binary to quinary has been measured, as shown in Figure 1 (Jin et al., ). The addition of Cr was shown having the most significant impact on the residual resistivity: the alloys containing Cr have one order magnitude higher resistivity than those without Cr. The NiCoFeCrAlx fall into the same resistivity range with those Cr-containing alloys. The NiCoFe-based alloys containing other alloying elements, e.g., Ti, and Si, have been observed to reach higher electrical resistivity only when significant amounts of intermetallics phases are formed (Zhang and Fu, ; Zuo et al., ), which is beyond the scope of SP-CSAs.
Figure 1
As shown in Figure 1, single-phase HEAs (i.e., containing four or more principal elements) do not necessarily have significantly higher electrical resistivities than the conventional alloys or the SP-CSAs containing less alloying elements: their electrical resistivity is indeed slightly higher than the 304 and 316 stainless steels, but close to Inconel 625, 718, and even the binary Ni-20Cr alloys (Mooij,
The complete picture of underlying physics is still challenging for CSAs due to the integrated impact from chemical, magnetic, and displacement disorder. The large difference in the (residual) resistivity between the NiCoFeCrMn subsets with and without Cr has been interpreted with the calculated Bloch spectral function (BSF) using ab initio Korring-Kohn-Rostoker coherent potential approximation (KKR-CPA) calculations (Jin et al.,
Thermal conductivity
The thermal conductivity in the NiCoFeCr-based HEAs and its subsets has been systematically measured (Jin et al.,
Figure 2

Thermal conductivity of Ni-containing FCC SP-CSAs, compared with several commercial alloys and BMGs. Data adapted from Yamasaki et al. (
Thermal conductivity is composed of electronic (κe) and lattice (κg) contributions, among which the electronic thermal conductivity is usually estimated from the electrical resistivity value based on the Wiedemann-Franz relationship, κe = LT/ρ, where L is the Lorenz constant, T is the temperature, and ρ is the electrical resistivity, since the direct measurement of this portion is usually not feasible (Klemens and Williams,
Figure 3

Fraction of lattice contribution to thermal conductivity in several Ni-containing FCC SP-CSAs at 300 K. Values calculated based on the data in Chou et al. (
Although the accuracy of Wiedemann-Franz relationship remains arguable, the results in Figure 3 at least reveals that the lattice thermal conductivity is an important transport property worth investigating. While directly determining the lattice thermal conductivity is non-trivial, it can be achieved from the phonon spectra since it is inversely proportional to phonon bandwidth, which is affected by the mass and force constant fluctuation. A recent theoretical work employing ab initio calculations has systematically studied the impact of these two kinds of disorders in a series of BCC equiatomic alloys, from binary to quinary (refractory HEAs) (Körmann et al.,
Electrical and thermal conductivities of HEAs are further related to their thermoelectric properties, with the figure of merit (ZT) calculated from the Seebeck coefficient (S), electrical resistivity (ρ), and total thermal conductivity (κ) from the equation ZT = S2ρ−1κ−1T. For example, low lattice thermal conductivities above room temperature in BiSbTe1.5Se1.5 (Fan et al.,
Mass transport properties: atomic diffusion behavior
“Sluggish diffusion” has been considered one of the four “core effects” in HEAs, with the three others being “high entropy,” “severe lattice distortion,” and “cocktail effects” (Miracle and Senkov,
A recent interdiffusion experiment has further shown that, more alloying elements do not necessarily retard diffusion process, even with respect to homologous temperatures (Jin et al.,
Figure 4

Normalized diffusion activation energy in several Ni-containing CSAs. Data adapted from Tsai et al. (
Other than the difficulties on accurate experimental quantification, the chemical disorder induced loss of translational invariance brings in much challenge for theoretical description of the defect transport behaviors in concentrated alloys. Defect behavior depends on its local environment, which is different from atom to atom due to the random distribution of chemical species. Unlike in pure metals, the defect energies are no longer single values but wide distributions in CSAs. Consequently, correct understanding the defect transport properties require large sampling effort, which is challenging especially to the first principles calculations (Zhao et al.,
Despite such challenges, theoretical calculations have been made recently to unveil the defect energies in a series of NiCoFeCrMn sub-systems, including NiCo, NiFe, Ni-20Cr, NiCoCr, and NiCoFeCr (Zhao et al.,
Figure 5

Migration barriers of (A) interstitials and (B) vacancies, as well as (C) vacancy formation energies in NiCoFeCr. The dash lines indicate the values for pure Ni. Data adapted from Zhao et al. (
The much faster vacancy migration revealed by the ab initio calculations seem to be “contradict” to the thermal diffusion experiments (through vacancy mediated diffusion mechanism), at the first glance, that the experimental diffusion activation energy in the CSAs is generally not lower than in pure Ni although the number of element may not be a controlling factor; the faster diffusion in CSAs has not been observed in the thermal diffusion experiments. This “discrepancy” can be attributed to that the activation energy derived from the diffusion experiments is the addition of both vacancy migration barrier and the vacancy formation energy (Janotti et al.,
In addition to the ab initio based investigations, phenomenological methods such as the calculation of phase diagrams (CALPHAD) have been used to understand and, more importantly, to predict the diffusion behavior in multicomponent system using the database parameters obtained from its constituent lower-order systems (Zhang C. et al.,
Irradiation resistance
Early systematic investigations on the irradiation response of concentrated alloys, while not equiatomic and not necessarily single-phase solid-solution, have been targeted primarily on the Fe-Cr-Ni based alloys, which are the prototypes of varieties of commercial alloys used or potentially used for nuclear engineering (e.g., stainless steels and Inconel series). For example, irradiation-induced swelling in about twenty Fe-Cr-Ni-based commercial alloys, pure Ni, and four Fe-15Cr-Ni model alloys with different Ni, Fe concentrations has been measured in Johnston et al. (
Response to the irradiation at room and low temperatures
NiCoFeCr and its SP-CSA subsets in single crystalline form have been experimentally studied in response to Au and Ni ion irradiations at room temperature (Zhang et al.,
The damage accumulation process characterized by ion channeling has been further investigated with combined transmission electron microscopy (TEM), diffuse X-ray scattering, and nanoindentation. For example, ion channeling data have shown that the damage accumulation process is delayed with increasing Fe concentration in the binary Ni-xFe alloys up to 60 at%, the microstructure features of which have been further revealed by TEM observations: the average defect size (especially for interstitial loops) decreases greatly with increasing Fe concentration (Figures 6b,c), although the defect density is correspondingly increased (Jin et al.,
Figure 6

(a) Ion channeling spectra of several Ni-containing FCC SP-CSAs irradiated with 1.5 MeV Ni ions to the fluence of 1 × 1014 cm−2, adapted from Zhang et al. (
The phase stability of FCC SP-CSAs at room temperature has been examined in both NiCoFeCr (Abhaya et al.,
Response to the irradiations at elevated temperatures
Comparisons on the irradiation induced swelling up to 53 dpa have been made between Ni and a series of Ni-containing FCC SP-CSAs in single crystalline form at 500°C using step-height measurements (Jin et al.,
In addition to the overall swelling values, the void formation has been observed under cross-sectional TEM observation (Lu et al.,
Figure 7

Cross-sectional TEM images for the void distributions in (a) Ni and (b) NiCoFeCr, and elemental distribution around (c) dislocations and (d) voids in NiCoFeCr, after 3 MeV Ni ion irradiations at 500°C. Adapted from Lu et al. (
The temperature dependence of microstructure evolution under ion irradiations at elevated temperatures has been performed in FeNiMnCr0.66 to 10 dpa at 400–700°C (Kumar et al.,
The phase stability under elevated temperature irradiation has been another major topic studied for this series of SP-CSAs. No secondary phases have been observed in any of the above materials under ion irradiations (including NiFe, NiCoFe, NiCoFeCr, NiCoFeCrMn, FeNiMnCr0.66, and NiCoFeCrAl0.1) at all conditions, suggesting a great phase stability. However, the electron-irradiated NiCoFeCrMn and NiCoFeCrPd thin foils (TEM samples) have shown L10 (NiMn)-type ordering decomposition and <001>-oriented spinodal decomposition between Co/Ni and Pd, respectively, even at a low dose of 1 dpa (He et al.,
The radiation-induced segregation (RIS) has been reported much suppressed in FeNiMnCr0.66, as compared with the Fe-Cr-Ni and Fe-Cr-Mn austenitic alloys (Kumar et al.,
Linkage between the transport properties and irradiation response
Ion irradiation generally involves atomic displacement and thermal spikes. Therefore, the (energy and mass) transport properties may affect the irradiation response of materials. Since external defect sinks appear minimum in the SP-CSAs, they provide a way to directly bridge the intrinsic transport properties to the irradiation response.
One of the contributions to the delayed damage accumulation in SP-CSAs under room temperature irradiation has been proposed as the reduced thermal conductivity (Zhang et al.,
The defect evolution during irradiation contains stages of defect production from collision cascades, in-cascade vacancy-interstitial recombination, and the subsequent prolonged migration process that causes the aggregation or annihilation of defects. Thus, the mass transport properties, i.e., defect diffusion kinetics can critically affect the eventual irradiation response of materials. As discussed in section Mass Transport Properties: Atomic Diffusion Behavior, the most apparent feature among the mass transport properties observed in SP-CSAs is the reduced separation, or even overlapping, of the migration barriers between interstitial and vacancies, compared with pure metals or dilute alloys in which interstitials usually migrates much faster than vacancies (Zhao et al.,
The impact of sluggish interstitial diffusion has been observed from several perspectives. First, as discussed for the cases of Ni-xFe, FeNiMnCr0.66, etc., the size of interstitial defect clusters in the SP-CSAs is much smaller than in pure metals and conventional alloys, due to the slow aggregation of interstitials (Jin et al.,
Further combined with the fast vacancy migration, the close migration barriers between interstitials and vacancies have also shown strong impact of irradiation response. First, it has been considered to reduce of surviving defects in SP-CSAs under room and low temperature irradiations, by reducing the separation of interstitial and vacancy populations, enhancing the their interactions, and further promoting the defect recombination (Velişa et al.,
The investigations on both irradiation response and transport properties of SP-CSAs with multiple principal elements (HEAs) are at the frontier of materials science. While their correlations have been presented, identifications of the roles of each aspect of compositional complexity have not been available. For example, clarifying the effects of the number of alloying elements is challenging, since although considerable differences have been observed between HEAs and the compositionally simpler alloys, few of the reported properties (both transport properties and irradiation response) monotonously change with the number of elements. Moreover, analyzing the role of each constituent becomes more difficult with increasing number of elements, since each added element interacts with all species in the original alloys and also affects their mutual interaction. Therefore, future experimental and theoretical investigations with careful control of variants among the three aspects of compositional complexity, number, type, and concentration of alloying elements, are demanded to better understand how modification of compositional complexity can affect the irradiation response through tailoring the transport properties (Figure 8).
Figure 8

Schematic drawing of the concept of enhancing irradiation resistance from modifying the energy and mass transport properties with the control of compositional complexity.
Summaries
Reduced electronic and thermal conductivity, retarded interstitial diffusion, easier vacancy migration, and harder vacancy formation have been observed in recent studies in a novel class of alloys, SP-CSAs. These intrinsic transport properties have been found to significantly impact their irradiation response, delay the damage accumulation, and suppress the interstitial aggregation and volume swelling. Bridging the intrinsic transport properties to the irradiation response has pushed forward the understanding on mechanisms of energy dissipation and defect evolution at the atomic and electronic level. The demonstrated capability of controlling irradiation response in SP-CSAs by modifying intrinsic transport properties without changing the microstructure may stimulate new alloy design strategies for the next generation nuclear structural alloys. However, although descriptive correlations between intrinsic transport properties and the irradiation response have been proposed, a predictive model that can quantitatively evaluate the compositional effects on defect evolution in SP-CSAs has not been available, and other factors than the transport properties such as the stacking fault energy and local atomic stress can also affect the irradiation response simultaneously; Further theoretical and experimental investigations are demanded to fill such knowledge gaps to further extract the potential of this attractive alloy family on energy applications.
Statements
Author contributions
KJ and HB together finished this review, including analyzing, writing, and figures.
Acknowledgments
The work was supported as part of the Energy Dissipation to Defect Evolution (EDDE), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences. The authors thank Dr. Shijun Zhao at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for fruitful discussions and suggestions.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Summary
Keywords
solid-solution alloys, high entropy alloys, thermal conductivity, electrical resistivity, radiation damage, diffusion
Citation
Jin K and Bei H (2018) Single-Phase Concentrated Solid-Solution Alloys: Bridging Intrinsic Transport Properties and Irradiation Resistance. Front. Mater. 5:26. doi: 10.3389/fmats.2018.00026
Received
25 January 2018
Accepted
12 April 2018
Published
30 April 2018
Volume
5 - 2018
Edited by
Yong Yang, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Reviewed by
Michael Gao, National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE), United States; Haihui Ruan, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
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*Correspondence: Ke Jin jink@ornl.govHongbin Bei beih@ornl.gov
This article was submitted to Structural Materials, a section of the journal Frontiers in Materials
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