Nanoparticle superalloy: Improving the strength of a metal alloy is hard to do without sacrificing the ductility. Yang et al. designed an iron-nickel-cobalt (Fe-Ni-Co) alloy laced with aluminum-titanium (Al-Ti) nanoparticles with both high strength and ductility. The key was getting the composition tuned correctly, because the Fe-Ni-Co matrix reacts with the Al-Ti nanoparticles. This was vital for avoiding environmental embrittlement, enhancing work hardening, and improving ductility. Science , this issue p. 933

In order to study chemical complexity-induced lattice distortion in high-entropy alloys, the static Debye–Waller (D-W) factor of NiCoFeMnCr solid solution alloy is measured with low temperature neutron diffraction, ambient X-ray diffraction, and total scattering methods. The static atomic displacement parameter of the multi-element component alloy at 0 K is 0.035–0.041 Å, which is obvious larger than that of element Ni (∼ 0 Å). The atomic pair distance between individual atoms in the alloy investigated with extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) measurements indicates that Mn has a slightly larger bond distance (∼0.4%) with neighbor atoms than that of others. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT IMPACT STATEMENT The chemical complexity induced local structural disorder in the high entropy alloy is distinguished from the thermal contribution by the combination of neutron and X-ray techniques.