Grain boundary self- and Mn impurity diffusion in equiatomic CoCrFeNi multi-principal element alloy

Grain boundary self-diffusion of Co, Cr and Fe and impurity diffusion of Mn are measured in a coarse-grained equatomic CoCrFeNi multi-principal alloy. The tracer diffusivities are determined in a wide temperature range of 643 K to 1273 K, which encompasses both the C- and B-type kinetic regimes of grain boundary diffusion in polycrystalline materials after Harrison’s classification. At higher temperatures (T>800 K), only one short-circuit (grain boundary) contribution is observed, while the existence of two distinct contributions is elucidated by thorough analysis of the penetration profiles corresponding to the C-type kinetic regime (643–703 K). The latter observations are explained in terms of a grain boundary phase decomposition after prolonged annealing below 700 K. The product of the segregation factor and the grain boundary width is found to be about 0.5 nm for all constituting elements. The grain boundary diffusion data indicate that Mn does not reveal a strong (if any) segregation in the equiatomic CoCrFeNi alloy.