Fig. 1: Tuning of the precipitate morphology in the Fe₃₅Co₃₀Ni₃₀Ta₅ (at.%) MCA.

ECC images showing an elongated grain structure along the cold rolling direction in the a D-MCA, b A-MCA, and e I-MCA. The lower-magnification images show high microstructural similarity (upper images). The higher magnification images show different features in the grain interior at the submicron scale (lower images). The cold rolling direction is horizontal to the image plane (white arrows). c Atomic-resolution STEM HAADF micrograph and corresponding FFT patterns generated from the morphologically anisotropic precipitates (ordered, orange frame) and fcc matrix (disordered, green frame) in the A-MCA. d 15-nm-thick slice extracted from an APT measurement showing plate-like precipitates. The corresponding proximity diagram provides the compositions of the precipitate and the matrix. The error bars are estimated as described in Methods. f Correlative STEM-APT analysis of the I-MCA material. Yellow arrows mark visible dislocation lines. The red arrows and dashed lines correlate the APT measurements with the corresponding TEM observations. All Ta-enriched regions in the APT map are shown using 7 at.% Ta isosurfaces.