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Sustainable Low-Cost Method for Production of High-Entropy Alloys from Alloy Scraps

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Abstract

In this communication, we propose a sustainable way to produce high-entropy alloys (HEAs) from alloy scraps called “alloy mixing”. We successfully demonstrate the method's feasibility at a lab scale using a near-equimolar CrCuFeMnNi HEA. Alloy scraps (304L stainless steel (SS), Nichrome 80, and electrical wire grade Copper) obtained from various sources were melted together using vacuum arc melting along with minor additions of Mn and Cr to achieve the equiatomic composition. The alloy was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which confirmed that the alloy produced through “alloy mixing” exhibits a microstructure similar to that of the alloy with the same composition produced through conventional melting of pure elements. Property calculation module on ThermoCalc was used to compare the yield strength of the conventional alloy and the alloy with impurities which indicated a 50% increase in yield strength. An uncertainty quantification analysis with 1000 alloy compositions with varying impurity contents indicates that the yield strength is strongly dependent on the impurity content. The cost analysis revealed that "alloy mixing" would lead to a significant reduction in fabrication costs. The results of this study are promising in the context of the commercialization of HEAs.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University for providing access to the HEA database of the ThermoCalc software. KH thanks Dr. Soumya Sridar, Hariharan Sriram, Vignesh Karunakaran, and Prahnaov Arun for the useful technical discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Materials Processing Laboratory, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, 620015, India

    Karthikeyan Hariharan & K. Sivaprasad

  2. Fontana Corrosion Center, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Karthikeyan Hariharan

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  1. Karthikeyan Hariharan
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  2. K. Sivaprasad
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Correspondence to K. Sivaprasad.

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The contributing editor for this article was Markus Reuter.

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Hariharan, K., Sivaprasad, K. Sustainable Low-Cost Method for Production of High-Entropy Alloys from Alloy Scraps. J. Sustain. Metall. 8, 625–631 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40831-022-00523-x

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