Electron Transport in High-Entropy Alloys: Al x CrFeCoNi as a Case Study

The high-entropy alloys AlxCrFeCoNi exist over a broad range of Al concentrations (0 < x < 2). With increasing Al contenttheir structure is changed from the fcc to bcc phase. We investigate the effect of such structural changes on transport propertiesincluding the residual resistivity, the anisotropic magnetoresistance, and the anomalous Hall resistivity. We have performeda detailed comparison of the first-principles simulations with available experimental data. We show that the calculated residualresistivity of the bcc phase is in a perfect agreement with experiment for all studied alloy compositions, whereas there are significantadditional non-intrinsic electron scattering channels in the fcc phase. We argue that the combination of the modern alloy-specificab initio methods for calculations of transport properties and experimental measurements might serve as an additional importanttool for the sample characterization of high-entropy alloys.