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Multifunctional high-entropy materials

Nature Reviews Materials volume 9, pages 846–865 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Entropy-related phase stabilization can allow compositionally complex solid solutions of multiple principal elements. The massive mixing approach was originally introduced for metals and has recently been extended to ionic, semiconductor, polymer and low-dimensional materials. Multielement mixing can leverage new types of random, weakly ordered clustering and precipitation states in bulk materials as well as at interfaces and dislocations. The many possible atomic configurations offer opportunities to discover and exploit new functionalities, as well as to create new local symmetry features, ordering phenomena and interstitial configurations. This opens up a huge chemical and structural space in which uncharted phase states, defect chemistries, mechanisms and properties, some previously thought to be mutually exclusive, can be reconciled in one material. Earlier research concentrated on mechanical properties such as strength, toughness, fatigue and ductility. This Review shifts the focus towards multifunctional property profiles, including electronic, electrochemical, mechanical, magnetic, catalytic, hydrogen-related, Invar and caloric characteristics. Disruptive design opportunities lie in combining several of these features, rendering high-entropy materials multifunctional without sacrificing their unique mechanical properties.

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Fig. 1: Principles, property targets, constraints and opportunities for the design of multifunctional high-entropy materials.
Fig. 2: Functional features of high-entropy materials and connections between them as identified by a natural language analysis.
Fig. 3: Magnetic high-entropy materials.
Fig. 4: Magnetic properties of high-entropy materials.
Fig. 5: Effect of nanoprecipitates on the mechanical and magnetic properties of high-entropy materials.
Fig. 6: Sustainability and cost considerations for high-entropy materials.

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Acknowledgements

The support of T. You, S. Zhang, C. Jung and K. Jang from the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials, M. Dai from TU Darmstadt, and J. Frenzel from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum is gratefully acknowledged. D.R. acknowledges financial support through the special focus programme SPP 2006 on Compositionally Complex Alloys–High Entropy Alloys (CCA-HEA), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under project no. 313773923. Z.L. acknowledges financial support from the Science and Technology Innovation Program of Hunan Province in China (grant no. 2023RC1013). O.G., D.R., Z.R., H.Z. and L.H. acknowledge funding from the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) under grant agreement no. 101099736 (Pathfinder Open CoCoMag project) and support by the DFG, project ID no. 405553726, Collaborative Research Centre Transregio CRC-TRR 270. H.H. acknowledges financial support through the DFG via the projects HA 1344/45-1 and HA 1344/43-1/-2. A.L., C.S. and D.R. acknowledge funding by the DFG — SFB 1625, project no. 506711657.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Liuliu Han, Ziyuan Rao, Christina Scheu, Dirk Ponge, Oliver Gutfleisch & Dierk Raabe

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, China

    Shuya Zhu & Zhiming Li

  3. Institute for Materials, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Alfred Ludwig

  4. Institute of Materials Science, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Hongbin Zhang & Oliver Gutfleisch

  5. Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Horst Hahn

  6. School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    Horst Hahn

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  1. Liuliu Han
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  2. Shuya Zhu
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Contributions

L.H., Z.L., A.L., O.G. and D.R. developed the ideas for the paper. All authors contributed equally to the concept, discussion of the results and manuscript writing.

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Correspondence to Liuliu Han, Alfred Ludwig or Dierk Raabe.

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Han, L., Zhu, S., Rao, Z. et al. Multifunctional high-entropy materials. Nat Rev Mater 9, 846–865 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-024-00720-y

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