Highly Distorted Lattices in Chemically Complex Alloys Produce Ultra-Elastic Materials with Extraordinary Elinvar Effects

TL;DR

This study reports a chemically complex alloy with highly distorted lattices that exhibits ultra-elasticity, extraordinary elastic strain limits, and stable elastic modulus at high temperatures, promising for high-precision, extreme environment applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel chemically complex alloy with highly distorted lattices that achieves unprecedented elastic properties and thermal stability.

Findings

Elastic strain limit ~2%, ten times higher than conventional alloys

Extremely low internal friction at room temperature

Maintains elastic modulus up to 900 K

Abstract

Conventional crystalline alloys usually possess a low atomic size difference in order to stabilize its crystalline structure. However, in this article, we report a single phase chemically complex alloy which possesses a large atomic size misfit usually unaffordable to conventional alloys. Consequently, this alloy develops a rather complex atomic-scale chemical order and a highly distorted crystalline structure. As a result, this crystalline alloy displays an unusually high elastic strain limit (~2%), about ten times of that of conventional alloys, and an extremely low internal friction (< 2E-4) at room temperature. More interestingly, this alloy firmly maintains its elastic modulus even when the testing temperature rises from room temperature to 900 K, which is unmatched by the existing alloys hitherto reported. From an application viewpoint, our discovery may open up new opportunities to design high precision devices usable even under an extreme environment.