Evading brittle fracture in submicron-sized high entropy intermetallics in dual-phase eutectic microstructure

Conventional Laves phase is extremely brittle at room temperature. However, through a systematic study, we showed that the quinary Co-Cr-Fe-Ni-Nb Laves phase in a eutectic high entropy alloy (EHEA) can be plastically deformed at room temperature when its size is refined below 200 nm. Based on our current results, we propose a general micromechanical model that not only explains the suppression of cracks in the high entropy Laves phase but also...