High-Temperature Corrosion of High- and Medium-Entropy Alloys CrMnFeCoNi and CrCoNi Exposed to a Multi-Oxidant Atmosphere H2O–O2–SO2

Abstract The high-temperature corrosion behaviors of the equimolar CrCoNi medium-entropy alloy and CrMnFeCoNi high-entropy alloy were studied in a gas atmosphere consisting of a volumetric mixture of 10% H 2 O, 2% O 2 , 0.5% SO 2 , and 87.5% Ar at 800 °C for up to 96 h. Both alloys were initially single-phase fcc with a mean grain size of ~ 50 μm and a homogeneous chemical composition. The oxide layer thickness of CrMnFeCoNi increased linearly with exposure time while it remained constant at ~ 1 μm for CrCoNi. A Cr 2 O 3 layer and minor amounts of (Co,Ni)Cr 2 O 4 developed on the latter while three oxide layers were detected on the former, i.e., a thin and continuous chromium rich oxide layer at the oxide/alloy interface, a dense (Mn,Cr) 3 O 4 layer in the center and a thick and porous layer of Mn 3 O 4 and MnSO 4 at the gas/oxide interface. Additionally, a few metal sulfides were observed in the CrMnFeCoNi matrix. These results were found to be in reasonable agreement with thermodynamic calculations.