Medium-Entropy Alloys (MEAs) Insights

• Medium-entropy alloys (MEAs) are multi-principal element metallic systems with 2-4 components that balance configurational entropy to stabilize simple solid solutions and suppress intermetallic phases.
• They exhibit outstanding mechanical properties such as high strength, ductility, and toughness, driven by mechanisms like dislocation slip, nanotwinning, and transformation-induced plasticity.
• Advanced experimental techniques and computational modeling enable tuning of chemical short-range order, thereby controlling stacking fault energies and defect dynamics for improved material performance.

Medium-entropy alloys (MEAs) are multi-principal element metallic systems in which the configurational entropy, while less than in high-entropy alloys (HEAs), is still sufficient to stabilize simple solid solutions and suppress intermetallic phases. Typically, MEAs contain two to four principal elements at near-equiatomic or significant concentrations, distinguishing them from HEAs (≥5 elements) and from traditional dilute alloys. The MEA concept has enabled the development of materials with remarkable combinations of strength, ductility, toughness, thermal stability, functional properties (including superconductivity), and exceptional resistance to damage under extreme environments.

1. Chemical Disorder, Short-Range Order, and Lattice Distortion

The atomic arrangement in MEAs is characterized by significant chemical disorder, but the notion of complete randomness is inaccurate for most experimentally relevant systems. Chemical short-range order (CSRO) is increasingly recognized as an intrinsic, tunable feature of MEAs, strongly affecting their defect energetics and physical properties. For instance, in fcc solid-solution MEAs such as CoCrNi, local atomic arrangements preferentially avoid Cr–Cr pairs while promoting Ni–Cr order, a feature that can be quantified with the Warren–Cowley parameter, $\alpha_{ij}^n = (p_{ij}^n - c_j)/(δ_{ij} - c_j)$, where $p_{ij}^n$ is the local probability, $c_j$ the concentration, and $δ_{ij}$ the Kronecker delta (Nitol et al., 14 Sep 2025).

Local lattice distortion (LLD) is another haLLMark, especially in BCC refractory MEAs with significant atomic size mismatch or electronic heterogeneity. Zr- and Hf-containing BCC MEAs exhibit an anomalous merging of the first and second pair distribution function peaks, reflecting extensive lattice strain that alters the atomic transport pathways for defects (Tong et al., 2019). Charge-transfer effects among elements can partially compensate for size mismatch but simultaneously broaden the local distance distribution, giving rise to heterogeneous strain fields.

2. Mechanical Properties and Deformation Mechanisms

MEAs offer a combination of high strength, ductility, and toughness, frequently exceeding those of both conventional alloys and HEAs (Gludovatz et al., 2016, Tang et al., 17 Mar 2025). For example, equiatomic CrCoNi exhibits room-temperature ultimate tensile strength (UTS) near 1 GPa, failure strains of ~70%, and $K_{JIc}$ fracture toughness of ~208 MPa·m$^{1/2}$. These properties are enhanced at cryogenic temperatures, with UTS exceeding 1.3 GPa, failure strains up to 90%, and $K_{JIc}$ values increasing to ~273 MPa·m$^{1/2}$. These remarkable values derive from the interplay of several plastic deformation modes:

• Continuous strain hardening with high work-hardening exponents (n ≈ 0.4), which delays necking and enhances ductility.
• Dislocation-mediated slip, leading to cell formation, gradual misorientation, and effective strain accommodation.
• Deformation-induced nanotwinning, especially prevalent at low temperatures, enabling additional strain accommodation and high fracture toughness (Gludovatz et al., 2016, Karimi et al., 2023).
• Transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) and twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP), whose dominance can be tuned by chemical composition and magnetic state, as revealed by GSFE calculations and experimental validation (Yang et al., 2020).

In addition to these fcc-based mechanisms, BCC MEAs with substantial LLD and charge transfer effects present unique pinning landscapes that retard dislocation glide and enhance radiation tolerance (Tong et al., 2019).

3. Role and Tunability of Chemical Short-Range Order

MEAs provide a platform for tuning local chemical order via alloy design and thermomechanical processing. Experimental studies on CrCoNi show that SRO, observable via high-resolution TEM and quantified through the nonproportional number parameter ($\Delta_{ij}$) or domain size analysis, significantly alters stacking fault energies (SFEs), dislocation behavior, and mechanical hardness (Zhang et al., 2019). Increased SRO leads to higher SFE ($\gamma_\text{ISF}$ increases from 8.18 to 23.33 mJ/m$^2$ upon aging), higher hardness, and yield strength. SRO also modifies the formation of diffuse anti-phase boundaries (DAPBs), mediating planar dislocation slip and twin formation.

The effect of SRO on SFE, and thereby on dislocation activity and twin propensity, has been systematically explored via first-principles calculations. The intrinsic SFE in CrCoNi can be tuned between –43 to +30 mJ/m$^2$ as a function of SRO, with phase stability ($\Delta E_{\text{fcc} \rightarrow \text{hcp}}$) co-varying with SFE and local order (Ding et al., 2018). This provides a mechanism for controlling the TRIP/TWIP balance and resulting macroscopic mechanical performance.

4. Computational Modeling and Predictive Tools

Classical interatomic potentials are typically inadequate to capture the subtle interplay of many-body chemical and lattice effects in MEAs. Machine-learned interatomic potentials, especially the Moment Tensor Potential (MTP) trained on high-fidelity DFT data, have demonstrated near-DFT accuracy for energies, forces, stresses, elastic moduli, and, crucially, chemically local stacking fault energetics (Nitol et al., 14 Sep 2025). MTP-based hybrid MC/MD allows the exploration of CSRO emergence, its compositional dependence, and its impact on defect behavior on large, realistic systems. Similar approaches using graph convolutional neural networks on MC/MD data can map the relationship of local atomic environments to system potential energy, facilitating the investigation of the structure–property relationship in MEAs and HEAs (Ehsan et al., 20 Nov 2024).

5. Functional Properties: Electrical, Thermal, and Superconductivity

MEAs are not solely structural materials. Semiconductor MEAs such as SiGeSn exhibit tunable bandgaps (from 1.11 eV to 0.28 eV as Sn content increases), enhanced electrical conductivity, and suppressed thermal conductivity due to Anderson localization and strong phonon anharmonicity. These properties result in an improved thermoelectric figure of merit and enable band engineering through both compositional tuning and manipulation of SRO/multihyperuniform order (Wang et al., 2020, Chen et al., 2021, Jin et al., 2022).

Superconductivity has been demonstrated in BCC and complex lattice MEAs (e.g., Nb$_2$TiW, (Ti$_{1/3}$Hf$_{1/3}$Ta$_{1/3}$)$_{1-x}$Nb$_x$, and Re-based $\alpha$-Mn lattices), with $T_c$ values up to 10 K at ambient pressure for nitride MEAs (Li et al., 11 Dec 2024, Li et al., 5 Jan 2025, Li et al., 3 Apr 2025, Zeng et al., 21 May 2025, Chen et al., 7 Aug 2025). These systems show strongly coupled s-wave behavior, large specific heat jumps ($\Delta C_{el}/\gamma T_c$ > 1.43), and, in some cases, upper critical fields exceeding the Pauli limit, hinting at the influence of high disorder and strong electron correlations (large Kadowaki–Woods ratios). The compositional tuning of valence electron count is a key parameter for optimizing $T_c$ in these materials, with non-centrosymmetric structure offering additional symmetry-based control of superconducting states.

6. Radiation Tolerance and Damage Accommodation

Defect dynamics in irradiated MEAs can be profoundly influenced by atomic-scale chemical heterogeneity and segregation phenomena. Segregation of elements such as Cu in FeNiCu MEAs produces chemically and energetically rough landscapes ("Cu-rich domains"), which act as defect traps, promoting rapid interstitial-vacancy recombination while suppressing cluster growth. This results in superior resistance to irradiation swelling, lower stair-rod dislocation density, and greater stability of the microstructure under irradiation compared to random solid solutions or pure metals (Rahman et al., 20 Nov 2024). The evolution of segregation versus mixing under continued cascade irradiation, and the quantified energy barriers for defect migration and formation, offer strategies for designing next-generation nuclear materials.

7. Data-Driven Approaches and Performance Assessment

MEAs have been systematically benchmarked against traditional low-temperature alloys using large, curated databases derived from automated and manually refined extraction of experimental literature (Tang et al., 17 Mar 2025). At cryogenic temperatures (e.g., 77 K), MEAs combine slightly lower yield strengths than Ti alloys with exceptional ductility (fracture elongations ~60%, versus ~40% for steels) and outstanding work hardening, a trait attributed to the activation of deformation nanotwinning and delayed necking. The yield-to-tensile ratio $R = \sigma_y/\sigma_u$ for MEAs reveals a favorable strength–ductility balance, which is visually apparent on Ashby maps and further validated by comprehensive comparison with steels, Ti alloys, Al alloys, and HEAs.

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MEAs thus constitute a broad class of multi-principal element materials where control over local chemical order, lattice distortion, and defect behavior yields competitive or superior mechanical, electronic, thermal, and superconducting properties, with additional advantages in radiation resistance and environmental stability. Ongoing research efforts rely heavily on the integration of advanced microscopy, computational modeling (DFT, machine-learned potentials, GNNs), and large-scale experimental data analytics to unravel and harness the complex structure–property relationships intrinsic to medium-entropy alloys.