As human improve their ability to fabricate materials, alloys have evolved from simple to complex compositions, accordingly improving functions and performances, promoting the advancements of human civilization. In recent years, high-entropy alloys (HEAs) have attracted tremendous attention in various fields. With multiple principal components, they inherently possess unique microstructures and many impressive properties, such as high strength and hardness, excellent corrosion resistance, thermal stability, fatigue, fracture, and irradiation resistance, in terms of which they overwhelm the traditional alloys. All these properties have endowed HEAs with many promising potential applications. An in-depth understanding of the essence of HEAs is important to further developing numerous HEAs with better properties and performance in the future. In this paper, we review the recent development of HEAs, and summarize their preparation methods, composition design, phase formation and microstructures, various properties, and modeling and simulation calculations. In addition, the future trends and prospects of HEAs are put forward. 根据人类开发材料的能力来看, 合金成分经历了从简单到复杂的发展过程. 合金的功能和性能不断改善, 同时促进了人类文明进步.具有多组分的高熵合金(HEAs)可以有效地改善合金的微观结构和性质. 高熵合金具有诸如高强度和高硬度、优异的耐腐蚀性和热稳定性、良好的抗疲劳强度及断裂强度、强耐辐射性等优异的性能, 这是传统的合金无法比拟的. 这些优异的性能也说明高熵合金未来具有非常高的应用前景. 近年来, 高熵合金在各个领域也呈现出快速发展的趋势. 为了更好地了解高熵合金的基础, 未来快速开发出具有更加优异性能的高熵合金, 本文综述了近年来关于高熵合金的发展. 高熵合金的发展已经经历了两个阶段, 第一个阶段为等摩尔-单相固溶体结构的高熵合金, 第二阶段为非等摩尔比的多相固溶体高熵合金. 本文主要讨论了高熵合金的制备方法、组分设计、相形成和微观结构、优异的性能和高熵合金在计算模拟方面的应用, 同时提出了高熵合金的未来发展趋势和前景.

High-entropy herringbone alloy: Eutectic high-entropy alloys have a dual phase structure that could be useful for optimizing a material’s properties. Shi et al . found that directional solidification of an aluminum-iron-cobalt-nickel eutectic high-entropy alloy created a herringbone-patterned microstructure that was extremely resistant to fracture (see the Perspective by An). The structure contained lamellae of hard and soft phases, and the cracks that formed in the hard phase were arrested at the boundary of the soft phase. This, along with stress transfer, allowed a tripling of the maximal elongation while retaining high strength. —BG