Precipitation and Hardness of Carbonitrides in a CrMnFeCoNi High Entropy Alloy

In order to explore precipitation hardening, carbonitrides precipitates are formed within a CrMnFeCoNi high entropy alloy (HEA). The matrix and the precipitates are independently characterized by electron probe microanalysis, atom probe tomography, transmission electron microscopy, and nanoindentation. The matrix is a face‐centered cubic multi‐component non‐equimolar solid‐solution, that is, Cr depleted, which is stable and interestingly as hard as its equimolar counterpart. The precipitates are stable chromium carbonitrides with a micron‐scale platelets morphology. They exhibit a hexagonal structure, are semi‐coherent with the matrixm and are harder than the matrix.