A precipitation strengthened high entropy alloy with high (Al+Ti) content for laser powder bed fusion: Synergizing in trinsic hot cracking resistance and ultrahigh strength

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a highly promising technique for producing near-net-shape high-value aerospace components with intricate geometries. However, due to the susceptibility to hot cracking, high-volume-fraction Ni3(Al,Ti)-type precipitation-strengthened Ni-base superalloys typically used for these applications are usually difficult or even infeasible to manufacture via AM. Previous metallurgical methods to mitigate hot-cracking in AM usually compromise strength, resulting in a trade-off between hot-cracking resistance and strength. Here, we overcome this trade-off in AM of a multicomponent Ni-rich precipitation-strengthened high-entropy alloy (MNiHEA) Ni46.23Co23Cr10Fe5Al8.5Ti4W2Mo1C0.15B0.1Zr0.02 (at%): synergizing remarkable hot-cracking resistance and ultrahigh strength. Crack-free MNiHEA is successfully fabricated via laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) without preheating, despite its high (Al+Ti) content of ∼7.4 wt%. This remarkable resistance to hot cracking arises from the comparatively low critical solidification range, the small average solidification cracking index, the suppression of the intermetallic phases in solidification, and the moderate hardening rate induced by the nanoprecipitates in aging, which are intrinsically imparted by thermodynamic and mechanical characteristics. The yield strength of the as-built-to-aged MNiHEA reaches ∼1.2 gigapascal, together with acceptable ductility. This ultrahigh strength outperforms its cast-to-aged counterpart by more than one-third and existing commercial superalloys CM247 and IN738LC. Such pronounced enhancement in strength is attained through multiple strengthening mechanisms, including solid-solution hardening, dislocation hardening, precipitation-hardening and grain-boundary strengthening. Our results demonstrate that intrinsic hot-cracking resistance can be utilized as a new metallurgical concept for mitigating hot-cracking without compromising strength in AM of high-temperature materials such as HEAs and superalloys.