Combinatorial methods for identifying new materials with desirable properties are based on inexpensive methods for fabricating a large number of specimens that cover a wide range of composition and methods for rapidly characterizing their structure and properties. Here, we report on efforts to develop combinatorial methods that can be applied to alloy synthesis and design - a traditionally expensive, time-consuming, and resource-intensive activity. New techniques have been developed to synthesize combinatorial alloy libraries for binary and ternary systems by physical vapor deposition and post-deposition processing. The techniques involve either co-deposition from three simultaneously operated elemental sources or deposition of discrete layers that are subsequently alloyed by solid state diffusion or localized electron beam melting. The chemical compositions and crystal structures of the alloy libraries have been determined by synchrotron-based x-ray fluorescence and diffraction techniques capable of characterizing as many as 2500 alloy compositions in less than 4 hours. The techniques are demonstrated by construction of isothermal sections of the ternary phase diagram of the Fe-Ni-Cr alloy system.

* Research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Industrial Technologies Program, Industrial Materials for the Future, and by the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. The UNICAT facility at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) is supported by the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Materials Research Laboratory (U.S. DOE, the State of Illinois-IBHE-HECA, and the NSF), the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (U.S. DOE under contract with UT-Battelle LLC), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S. Department of Commerce) and UOP LLC. The APS is supported by the U.S. DOE, Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science under contract No. W-31-109-ENG-38.