Ultimate tensile strength

Creep

Composite material

Eutectic system

Metallurgy

Materials science

Ductility (Earth science)

Alloy

High entropy alloys

Elongation

Aluminium

Microstructure

Science

High-entropy herringbone alloy Eutectic high-entropy alloys have a dual phase structure that could be useful for optimizing a material’s properties. Shi et al . found that directional solidification of an aluminum-iron-cobalt-nickel eutectic high-entropy alloy created a herringbone-patterned microstructure that was extremely resistant to fracture (see the Perspective by An). The structure contained lamellae of hard and soft phases, and the cracks that formed in the hard phase were arrested at the boundary of the soft phase. This, along with stress transfer, allowed a tripling of the maximal elongation while retaining high strength. —BG

Hierarchical crack buffering triples ductility in eutectic herringbone high-entropy alloys