HN Explorer

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tornikeo
I wonder if the Xenonite is a high-entropy alloy :-)
thatxliner
Because with so many metals in high entropy alloys, you can tune it to whatever, and that's why it's currently being investigated for potential room temperature superconductors.
skybrian
Have any commercially interesting alloys been found? This article seems to be all about research.
rsfern
It depends what you mean by commercially interesting. There’s loads of interest in aerospace (for high temp corrosion resistant structural components) and catalysis but these alloys are pretty much across the board at a relatively low level of technical readiness. It’s developed enough that there’s significant industry R&D and not just academic and government research, but I don’t think there’s really wide-scale deployment yet of alloys with 4+ principal elements
scythe
Most high-entropy alloys contain expensive metals so the primary domain of interest has mostly been as a coating for other metals. Recently there has been some work on AlCrMnFeNi, which is the cheapest composition I've seen by far.
malux85
The challenge with modelling HEAs is that they have very complex electronic structures, its very tempting for a newbie to throw an MLIP at the problem but in reality you have many complicated bonding arrangements that are not captured by these models, this is also compounded by the fact that you dont just have a slab with a bunch of itinerant electrons but you end up with covalent and even ionic-like bondings forming in the SRO substructures. Then theres spin treatment (which matters a lot), and also because the configuration space is combitatorially large you also have to do some high throughout studies with statistical interpretation since by definition theres no such thing as a representative unit cell in an HEA

How do I know? We have invented multiple via simulation and have them in the lab for synthesis now!

anonym00se1
I did some work with HEAs, specifically Paliney-6 and Paliney-7, and was pretty blown away by two things:

1. Material properties

2. Cost.

teravor
has anyone ever attempted to create a machine that would trial semi-random material compositions with minimal human involvement?
foven
These things are interesting but for the most part quite dull and very industry-facing. Just mash together a bunch of random elements and see if it improves the thing you want to optimize.