The metastable constituent effects on size-dependent deformation behavior of nanolaminated micropillars: Cu/FeCoCrNi vs Cu/CuZr

Abstract Metastable high entropy alloys (HEAs) and amorphous metallic glasses (MGs), with the chemical disordered character, are intensively studied due to their excellent performance. Here, we introduce Cu to separately constrain these two metastable materials and comparatively investigate their deformation behavior and mechanical properties of Cu/HEA FeCoCrNi and Cu/MG CuZr nanolaminated micropillars in terms of intrinsic layer thickness h and extrinsic pillar diameter D. The metastable HEA layers, as the hard phase in Cu/HEA micropillars, are stable and dominate the deformation, while transformation (crystallization) occurs in MG which plays a minor role in deformation of Cu/MG micropillars. The h-controlled deformation mode transits from the D-independent homogenous-like deformation at large h to the D-dependent shear banding at small h in both Cu/HEA and Cu/MG micropillars. Although both Cu/HEA and Cu/MG micropillars exhibit a maximum strain hardening capability controlled by h, the former manifests much lower hardening capability compared with the latter. The intrinsic size h and extrinsic size D have a strong coupling effect on the strength of Cu/HEA and Cu/MG micropillars. The strength of strength of Cu/HEA micropillars exhibits the D-dependent transition from “smaller is stronger” to “smaller is weaker” with increasing h. By contrast, the strength of Cu/MG micropillars exhibits the transition from bulk-like D-independent behavior at large h to small volume D-dependent behavior (smaller is stronger) at small h.