Tensile Deformation Microstructure of 3D-Printed CrMnFeCoNi Alloy

The industrial application of novel high-entropy alloys (HEAs), consisting of five or more principal elements having composition between 5 and 35 at.%, requires suitable manufacturing processes. The conventional fabrication routes for HEAs are casting and powder metallurgy. The casting route often leads to elemental segregation, whereas the powder metallurgy consumes more resources and can lead to metastable products. Additive manufacturing or 3D-printing has emerged to be effective in curbing some drawbacks of conventional manufacturing routes for HEAs [1]. The CrMnFeCoNi HEA (also referred to as Cantor alloy) has been reported to exhibit an excellent combination of strength and ductility [2]. Lately, the CrMnFeCoNi HEA fabricated via 3D-printing has been observed to have a chemically more homogeneous single face-centered cubic (FCC) solid solution structure [3, 4]. However, the selective laser-melted CrMnFeCoNi HEA has a hierarchical microstructure composed of large columnar grains, melt pools, and small cells [4]. While several researchers have studied the as-fabricated microstructures of the 3D-printed Cantor alloy, relatively scarce information is available on its deformed microstructure. Thus, this study was aimed to investigate the tensile deformation microstructure of the selective laser-melted CrMnFeCoNi HEA through electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD).