Deformation response of high entropy alloy nanowires

This paper reports atomistic simulation studies of tensile and compressive behavior of nanowires of a model quinary high entropy face-centered cubic (FCC) alloy. The simulations employ empirical interatomic potentials and use massively parallel molecular dynamics techniques at the atomistic level to study the deformation mechanisms. The studies consider pristine cylindrical nanowires oriented along various crystallographic directions. The focus is the role that local composition fluctuations in the random alloy plays in the deformation response. The deformation behavior observed for the complex random alloy is compared with a corresponding “average atom” material that has the same average properties but no local compositional fluctuations. In all cases, deformation is governed by dislocations emitted from the free surface. Twinning was also found, depending on the crystallographic orientation and loading mode. We show that for all orientations, the high entropy alloy (HEA) wires show the onset of plasticity at lower stress levels than the average atom material. However, after the onset of plasticity, the HEA presents a higher strength, mostly driven by the fact that the dislocations emitted from the surface do not glide as easily in the random alloy as they do in the average atom material.