Tolerability of Fe35Ni35Cr20Mn10 Multi-principal-component Alloy to Impurity Elements

Two nominal Fe35Ni35Cr20Mn10 (in at.%) multi-principal-component alloys (MCAs) were prepared in vacuum-induction furnace with industrial purity (IP, > 98.5wt.%) and high-purity (HP, > 99.5wt.%) raw metals, respectively. The microstructure was characterized by XRD, SEM and TEM. Tensile mechanical properties and continual plastic deformation ability of them after hot-forging + homogenization annealing were examined by tensile test and continuous cold rolling test. For IP-MCA, the content of “impurity” elements (other elements excluding Fe, Ni, Cr and Mn) is high to 1.68wt.%. However, only single-FCC phase is detected by XRD and no any second phase particles are observed by SEM and TEM, just like that in HP-MCA with an impurity content of 0.4wt.%. It is interesting to find that IP-MCA possesses the equally excellent strength and elongation like HP-MCA. Cold rolling examination indicates that the sheet of IP-MCA with a thickness of 14.0 mm can be continuously rolled to a thin-strip of 0.35 mm. This exhibits an extremely excellent continuous plastic deformation ability, like HP-MAC. Thus, due to much lower cost, IP-MCA can be reliably step toward manufacturing industrial productions. Due to the tortile lattice in physic process for a give MCA system, the tolerability to impurity elements is thought to be large.