High-performance structural materials are critical to the development of transportation, energy, and aerospace. In recent years, newly developed high-entropy alloys with a single-phase solid-solution structure have attracted wide attention from researchers due to their excellent properties. However, this new material also has inevitable shortcomings, such as brittleness at ambient temperature and thermodynamic instability at high temperature. Efforts have been made to introduce a small number of intermetallic compounds into single-phase solid-solution high-entropy alloys as a secondary phase to their enhance properties. Various studies have suggested that the performance of high-entropy alloys can be improved by introducing more intermetallic compounds. At that point, researchers designed an intermetallic compound-strengthened high-entropy alloy, which introduced a massive intermetallic compound as a coherent strengthening phase to further strengthen the matrix of the high-entropy alloy. Inspired from this, Fantao obtained a new alloy—high-entropy intermetallics—by introducing different alloying elements to multi-principalize the material in a previous study. This new alloy treats the intermetallic compound as the main phase and has advantages of both structural and functional materials. It is expected to become a new generation of high-performance amphibious high-entropy materials across the field of structure and function. In this review, we first demonstrate the inevitability of intermetallic compounds in high-entropy alloys and explain the importance of intermetallic compounds in improving the properties of high-entropy alloys. Secondly, we introduce two new high-entropy alloys mainly from the aspects of composition design, structure, underlying mechanism, and performance. Lastly, the high-entropy materials containing intermetallic compound phases are summarized, which lays a theoretical foundation for the development of new advanced materials.

In this study, a C/TiC nanocomposite coating has been prepared by magnetron sputtering technology and vacuum heat treatment technology on a titanium surface, which is used for bipolar plates (BPs) in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). This prepared C/TiC nanocomposite coating was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectroscopy, electrochemical testing and interfacial contact resistance (ICR). The results show that a C/TiC nanocomposite coating consists of a single C surface layer (~28.88 nm) and TiC interface layer (~19.5 nm). In addition, compared with commercially pure titanium substrate (i_corr = 345.10 μA cm⁻²), the corrosion resistance of a C/TiC nanocomposite coating (i_corr = 0.74 μA cm⁻²) was greatly improved in 0.5 M H₂SO₄ + 5 ppm HF solution at 80 °C. The corrosion current density (i_corr) decreased 3 orders of magnitude in a simulated cathodic environment. Moreover, the interfacial contact resistance of a C/TiC nanocomposite coating is 2.34 mΩ cm² under 1.4 MPa compaction force, which is much lower than that of raw CP Ti (38.66 mΩ cm²).

In this paper, the microstructure, deformability, tensile properties, and phase hardness of the Ti–43Al–2Cr–0.7Mo–0.1Y alloy with a high β phase content were investigated. Microstructural analysis showed that the β phase precipitated not only at the colony boundaries but also inside the lamellae due to its high content. A high-quality forging stock was prepared through one-step noncanned forging. The total deformation reached above 80%, suggesting that the alloy has good hot deformability compared to other TiAl alloys. The deformed microstructure was composed of fine and equiaxed grains due to dynamic recrystallization. The high β phase content was shown to contribute to the decomposition of the initial coarse lamellae. Tensile testing showed that the alloy has good room-temperature ductility, even if the β phase content reaches above 20%. This is inconsistent with a previous study that showed that a large amount of the hard β phase is detrimental to the room-temperature ductility of TiAl alloys. Nanoindentation testing showed that the hardness of the β phase in the current alloy is about 6.3 GPa, which is much lower than that in the Nb-containing TiAl alloys. Low hardness benefits the compatible deformation among various phases, which could be the main reason for the alloy’s good room-temperature ductility. Additionally, the influence of various β stabilizers on the hardness of the β phase was also studied. The β phase containing Nb had the highest hardness, whereas the β phase containing Cr had the lowest hardness.

A crack-free Ti-43Al-9V-0.2Y alloy sheet was successfully fabricated via hot-pack rolling at 1200 °C. After hot-rolling, the β/γ lamellar microstructure of the as-forged TiAl alloy was completely converted into a homogeneous duplex microstructure with an average γ grain size of 10.5 μm. The dynamic recrystallization (DRX) of the γ phase was systematically investigated. A recrystallization fraction of 62.5% was obtained for the γ phase in the TiAl alloy sheet, when a threshold value of 0.8° was applied to the distribution of grain orientation spread (GOS) values. The high strain rate and high stress associated with hot-rolling are conducive for discontinuous dynamic recrystallization (DDRX) and continuous dynamic recrystallization (CDRX), respectively. A certain high-angle boundary (HAGB: θ = 89° ± 3°), which is associated with DDRX, occurs in both the recrystallized and deformed γ grains. The twin boundaries play an important role in the DDRX of the γ phase. Additionally, the sub-structures and sub-boundaries originating from low-angle boundaries in the deformed grains also indicate that CDRX occurs. The mechanical properties of the alloy sheet were determined at both room and elevated temperatures. At 750 °C, the alloy sheet exhibited excellent elongation (53%), corresponding to a failure strength of 467 MPa.

In this study, the isothermal die forging process of high Nb–TiAl (Ti-44Al-8Nb-0.2W-0.2B-Y, at.%) alloy blades was simulated using the ABAQUS V6.11 software and the blades were fabricated successfully. The influence of a low forging temperature (lower than 1000 °C) and strain rate on the distributions of effective strain and stress were analyzed. The results indicate that the effective strain exhibits negative temperature sensitivity and positive strain rate sensitivity. The stress exponent (n = 3.02) and the apparent activation energy (Q = 293.381 kJ/mol) of the present alloy suggests that this as-forged high Nb–TiAl alloy exhibits good deformability at low temperatures. With the reduction in strain rate and the increase in forging temperature, the effective stress decreases. Finally, high-quality high Nb–TiAl alloy blades were fabricated using an isothermal die forging technology at a rate of 0.01 mm/s and temperature of 950 °C, chosen on the basis of the simulations results. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electron back scatter diffraction (EBSD) results indicated that the center of the TiAl alloy blade possessed a duplex microstructure, consisting of remnant lamellar colonies and recrystallized γ/B2 grains. The refined α₂ laths showed a typical forging flow line feature in the edge position, whereas the γ laths had broken down and recrystallized.

The influences of process annealing temperature during cold rolling on microstructure and mechanical properties of Ti-3.5Al-5Mo-6V-3Cr-2Sn-0.5Fe near β high strength titanium alloy sheets have been investigated. Results showed that the alloy mainly included the deformation induced dislocation structures after cold rolling but no obvious band structure, twin crystal or martensite were observed in this work. The texture components, which were affected by process annealing, are mainly γ-fiber, α-fiber and weak Goss texture. The γ-fiber of alloy when process annealed at 780 °C (α/β phase field) is stronger than at 830 °C (β phase field), where the Goss texture of alloy with process annealing temperature of 830 °C is more obvious. Results of annealing heat treatments showed that the recrystallization of the cold rolled was basically completed in a relatively short time of 2 min at 750 °C for 2 min. The refinement of grain size led to a significant increase of plasticity compared to rolled alloy. Results of tensile testing of aged alloy display the excellent combination of strength and plasticity, and the cold rolled alloy with process annealed at α/β phase field exhibits the better mechanical properties than at β phase field.