For fusion to be realized as a safe, sustainable source of power, new structural materials need to be developed which can withstand high temperatures and the unique fusion radiation environment. An attractive aspect of fusion is that no long-lived radioactive wastes will be produced, but to achieve this structural materials must comprise reduced activation elements. Compositionally complex alloys (CCAs) (also called high entropy alloys, HEAs) are promising candidates for use in extreme environments, including fusion, but few reported to date have low activation. To address these material challenges, we have produced novel, reduced activation, HEAs by arc-melting, and investigated their thermal stability, and radiation damage resistance using 5 MeV Au²⁺ ion implantation. Whilst the alloys were designed to form single phase BCC, using room temperature and non-ambient in situ X-ray diffraction we have revealed the thermodynamically stable structure of these alloys is in fact a sigma phase. We propose that a BCC phase is formed in these alloys, but at high temperatures (>1000°C). A BCC phase was also formed during heavy ion implantation, which we propose to be due to the rapid heating and cooling that occurs during the thermal spike, effectively freezing in the BCC phase produced by an implantation induced phase transformation. The BCC phase was found to have high hardness and a degree of ductility, making these new alloys attractive in the development of reduced activation HEAs for nuclear applications.

High-entropy alloys (HEAs), i.e., multicomponent alloys where (typically five or more) elements are combined in equal, or roughly equal, quantities, are of great current interest, due to their formation of single, simple structured phases, and the unusual properties they can potentially exhibit. Phase presence may be predicted using semi-empirical methods, but deviations from predictions may be seen during the course of alloy synthesis, with the formation of unexpected phases. The generation of such phases may be controlled with knowledge of the effective solidification temperature; in this full article, Chvorinov’s rule for solidification time is used to estimate this temperature as part of the design of a new multiphase alloy system, TiVCrZr-Si_x. Further heat treatment of the TiVCrZr-Si system confirms the applicability of this approach. The new compositions demonstrate mechanical properties that suggest potential for optimization for high-temperature applications.