Abstract “Self-sharpening”, a material maintaining its acute head shape during penetration, is highly desirable in a wide range of engineering applications. However, it remains a great challenge to make it occur in conventional single-principal-element alloys. Here, we develop a new chemical-disordered multi-phase tungsten high-entropy alloy that exhibits outstanding self-sharpening capability, in sharp contrast to conventional tungsten alloys only showing mushrooming. This alloy consists of a BCC dendrite phase and a rhombohedral μ phase embedded in the continuous FCC matrix, and such a unique microstructure leads to a 10–20% better penetration performance than conventional tungsten heavy alloys. We show that emergence of the self-sharpening is triggered by the ultrastrong μ phase stimulated dynamic recrystallization softening mediated shear banding. This study sheds light on the origin of self-sharpening and might open new opportunities for developing high-performance penetrator materials.

中文翻译：

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“自锐”钨高熵合金

摘要 “自锐”是一种在穿透过程中保持其尖锐头部形状的材料，在广泛的工程应用中非常受欢迎。然而，使其出现在传统的单主元素合金中仍然是一个巨大的挑战。在这里，我们开发了一种新的化学无序多相钨高熵合金，它具有出色的自锐化能力，与仅表现出迅速增长的传统钨合金形成鲜明对比。这种合金由 BCC 枝晶相和嵌入连续 FCC 基体中的菱形 μ 相组成，这种独特的微观结构比传统的钨重合金具有 10-20% 的穿透性能。我们表明自锐化的出现是由超强 μ 相刺激的动态再结晶软化介导的剪切带触发的。这项研究揭示了自锐化的起源，并可能为开发高性能穿透材料开辟新的机会。