Cold sprayed FeCoNiCrMn High Entropy Alloy (HEA) coating: microstructure and tribological property

High entropy alloys (HEAs) are of great interest in the community of materials science and engineering due to their unique phase structure. They are constructed with five or more principal alloying elements in equimolar or near-equimolar ratio. Therefore, HEAs can derive their performances from multiple principle elements rather than single element. In this work, for the very first time, solid-state cold spray technology was applied to produce FeCoNiCrMn HEA coatings. Cold spray as a low-temperature deposition process can completely retain the HEA phase structure in the coating without any phase transformation. The EBSD characterization indicates the occurrence of grain refinement at the highly deformed particle boundary region, which is similar to the microstructure of conventional cold sprayed metal coatings. In addition to the phase and microstructure characterization, the tribological property of the cold sprayed HEA coating was also performed. The experimental test indicates that cold sprayed HEA coating had excellent wear-resistance performance.