Concurrent dramatic enhancement of high-temperature strength and ductility in a high-entropy alloy via chain-like dual-carbides at grain boundaries

Grain boundaries (GBs) are often known as intergranular cracking sources in alloys at high temperatures, resulting in limited high-temperature strength and ductility. Here, we propose a GB-dual-carbide (denoted as GB-DC) strengthening strategy and have developed a high-performance (NiCoFeCr)₉₉Nb_0.5C_0.5 high-entropy alloy (HEA) with exceptional strength-ductility synergy at 1073 K. Chain-like coherent M₂₃C₆ carbides have been successfully introduced at GBs and remain a cube parallel crystallographic orientation with the face-centered cubic (FCC) matrix during deformation. Nano-scale NbC particles are distributed alternatively between M₂₃C₆ carbides and inhibit their coarsening. Both strength and ductility of the GB-DC HEA increase dramatically at strain rates ranging from 10⁻⁴ to 10⁻² s⁻¹ at 1073 K, compared with those of the single-phase NiCoFeCr HEA. Specifically, yield strength of 142 MPa, ultimate tensile strength of 283 MPa, and elongation of 34% were obtained, which are twice that of the reference NiCoFeCr HEA (82 MPa, 172 MPa, and 18%, respectively). EBSD investigations demonstrated that chain-like carbides enhance the GB cohesion at high temperature, and TEM analysis revealed that dislocations can go through the coherent phase boundaries (CPBs) and activate dipoles inner M₂₃C₆ carbides, which weakened the stress concentration in GBs. This substantially reduces the critical stress for dislocation generation and transmission to a stress level lower than that required for intergranular fracture. Theoretical estimation suggests that carbides result in a much higher activation energy (∼510 kJ/mol) for GB sliding and a rather low interface energy (∼101 mJ/m²) compared with the GB energy (1000 mJ/m²), which rationalizes the enhanced GB cohesion by carbides.