Really neat video. Garage electron microscopy is badass and your channel does a fantastic job popularizing concepts which are not widely known in the pop-science world. There are some places where I have to say this video could really be shored up technically, though. The big one is that, in my professional opinion (my postgrad work is all in HEA alloy design), the alloys produced here don't meet the usual working definitions for high entropy/multi-principal element alloys. The laser sputtering process you're using produces very non-equilibrium structures, because of the very fast cooling rate as well as intrinsic size effects. Most "true" HEAs produce a single solid solution phase, or a dual-phase structure, at equilibrium conditions. Or, in some newer definitions that have started to get used in the last 5 years or so, it just has to make a "simple", intermetallic free microstructure when subjected to a high temperature homogenization treatment followed by a water quench. There is a lot of debate still about whether the single-phase HEAs like CoCrFeMnNi are *really* single phase if you take them to equilibrium, but that's way off in the weeds. The other big point I'd correct is that "high entropy alloy" has turned out to be a sort of un-useful name for these alloys. The idea that the mixing entropy stabilizes the single-phase structure, which you talk about around 3:10-3:30, has fallen out of favor for metals. I believe for ceramics it is still considered useful. Very curious readers might try and sci-hub themselves a copy of Dan Miracle & Oleg Senkov's massive critical review article 5 years back: "A critical review of high entropy alloys and related concepts," Acta Materialia 122 (2017).
Rad, thanks for the extra insight! Just gonna pin your comment to the top for the time being, seems easier than rephrasing into an addendum of corrections :) Taking a look at "A critical review of high entropy alloys and related concepts" now, cheers for the tip!
the definition of HEA is a big debate indeed, I believe the name is too simplistic :) To my understanding, HEA = a single solid solution, since the configurational entropy (which is only one contribution for the total entropy) is supposed to stabilise it; in the end, the choice of metals is quite limited to suit this definition, you maybe have an handful of systems that fulfil it. But if you design an multi-element alloy with multiple phases, then it would be best suited to call it chemical complex alloy or something similar. This field is really interesting!
@@loicp.1487 HEAs don't actually have that much mixing entropy. For an equiatomic alloy of N components, you get a molar mixing entropy of S = R * ln(N) where R is ideal gas constant. (you can do the rearrangement of terms in the proof from statmech en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_of_mixing) Natural log is not a fast growing function. Because of this, many people working in the field, including me, prefer the term 'multi-principal metal alloy' . They still have many excited properties, but the mixing entropies are not one of them.
@@BreakingTaps I wish I had known you were making this video, HEAs/MPEAs are my major focus now. You could have picked my brain or I could have connected you with a more hands-on expert. That said, if you are working on a corrosion video in the future, I could connect you with some experts that love telling stories.
@@MichaelWatersJ maybe I was not clear enough, sorry… I was trying to make a difference between HEAs and CCAs/MPMAs. My point was, if you go back to the early Yeh’s papers, he clearly states that the mixing entropy is the reason of the existence of such solid solutions. It has been demonstrated otherwise since (not every combination of 5 elements gives a solid solution), and I am aware there are tons of metallic alloys that exhibit higher values of entropy than HEAs. Sorry if my message was source of misunderstanding
I read that some Japanese researchers made a high entropy alloy of all (or most? I can't remember) the platinum group metals. The super alloy was an extremely powerful catalyst for electrochemical redox reactions (they had hydrogen fuel cells in mind for this alloy). But more interesting than the material was the preparation process, they took all the constituent metals in dissolved salt form, (I think it was mostly nitrates?) And poured the mixture into a reducing solution while stirring. The metals reduced together and formed particles of the high entropy alloy. The process seems extremely easy to replicate but I am not going to buy all of the platinum group metals, I am not a billionaire lol. But I do wonder if the same chemical method would work for other metals?
Perhaps something akin to electrostatic attraction could allow for thin films of different metals to be sprayed and wiped off in thin layers. Then, take your thin cake of metals, and crush it like damascus.
It might be harder with metals with dramatically different galvanic potentials, where the easier to reduce salts would act like a sacrificial anode on a ship in reverse and precipitate first.
@@forresthsu582 true, but if a solution was reducing enough it might minimize that issue. Starting with metals that have very similar electrochemical potentials would be a good place to start tho. There are some insanely reducing chemicals out there tho and it would be fun to try to get this to work with very weird mixtures of metals
I work in Aluminium research and the intermetallics in 3xxx and other alloys are very important in achieving the large deformations seen in deep drawing and other wrought aluminium processes. Yes, they can have some undesirable properties, but also some very important ones.
**later that day** "Dude this king guy is an IDIOT! Killer party bro! This is the life! Jessica bring me some more white pixie dust! Weeeeheeeewww!*" *lower lip curled american hollering.
As someone who did a part of his M.Sc. on High entropy alloys (HEAs) and is currently doing his Ph.D. on it, I have some comments to mention that might be useful for you: 1- The choice of elements is one of the most important aspects of making high entropy alloys. The two most successful alloys (Cantor and Senkov) are made of elements with very similar valence electron number and atomic radius (and some other properties). This similarity prevents the formation of intermetallic phases inside the HEAs that gives them those exceptional properties. The elements you chose are highly unlikely to form HEAs due to this dissimilarity. 2- As other people mentioned, the conventional explanation for entropy in HEAs effect has proven not entirely correct. To be more specific, the free Gibbs energy for the formation of intermetallic phases is made of both entropy and enthalpy parts and while the addition of more than 5 elements can increase the entropy of the alloy, it will also increase the chance of formation of intermetallic phases due to lower enthalpy of formation. Thus, maybe trying the same method for a lower number of elements (4 or 5) would be more successful. 3- The production method plays a significant role in the quality of high entropy alloys. For example, many of the HEAs with refractory metals are highly sensitive to oxidation and can flake off very quickly (called pesting). Also, the lattice mismatch can cause stresses that can break down samples while cooling down. On the other hand, I have seen many metallic glasses with high entropy compositions. So it is doable. Overall, excellent video and good luck!
Does high entropy tend to imply high energetic cost? The enthalpy part makes me think yes. This is a science language trick. We've always known that a good Smith makes magic metal given a long enough time with enough fuel in a hot enough furnace. That's always been the case.
Sound like a good excuse to request a microgravity experiment on the ISS. Aslo what happens if you deposit your layers as thin as possible, even at the risk of incomplete coverage for each layer?
In theory if you have really good control over the sputtering process, you're approaching something similar to Atomic Layer Deposition or Molecular Beam Epitaxy! Can basically lay down precise layers of atoms and build the crystal from the ground up. I think that still tends to give you a layered alloy so it'll be slightly different than a more amorphous sample derived from something like an arc furnace or laser. But could be a really useful starting material, i.e. take that and anneal it to let the atoms shift around some.
@@BreakingTaps Ah yes, I wondered if something like annealing would cause useful amounts of diffusion too. I guess it depends on how long you hold the sample at the high temperature in an inert atmosphere or vacuum?
@@BreakingTaps Can you have multiple sputter targets at the same time?... Multiple beams at the same molecular transfer rate could create a near perfect mix on the substrate.
In my adolescent mind I don't like to embarrass myself, but I can't help it, but what is the difference between the lasers you are using as compared to the plasma furnace that is supposed be a major change economically from the electrode furnaces now in commercial use. Is it possible for deposited material to be proactively different than a concentration of energy of the laser? Fascinating stuff even for a dullard like myself, keep it coming, even Goodyear stumbled across something novel while cluelessly experimenting.
A couple years back I brewed up a theoretical process for making a high entropy alloy in bulk with relatively uncomplicated procedures using powdered metals with appropriate phase transition temperatures in a welded steel canister (similar to techniques used by some to make damascus steel). Idk if it would work tbh, haven't had the shop space or correct tools to attempt since I dreamt it up, but I call theoretical product "chaos silver" in my head lol
@@thebogsofmordor7356 possibly yes. In my considerations, I've sought to eliminate as many engineering complications as possible, applying such a field within a furnace introduces quite a few difficulties; melt times would have to be 4-6 hours minimum I think to maximize chances of success. Another point of consideration is how you cool it (quickly to the lowest solidifying temp of the constituent elements and then gradually to room temp over 2-3 hours is my idea in order to maximize homogenous crystal formation although there are a few different permutations of procedures that would likely need experimented with before success) during which applying static and alternating fields (electric and magnetic) could produce beneficial effects and would be much easier from an engineering standpoint.
Mhm the idea isn't bad but you would need singel atom metal dust to generate a HEA also forget the heating over the liquidus that would lead to phase separation like we have seen in the first nano droplets BT has shown us and it is absolutely unnecessary ever heard of coold welding just bring the metal atoms near enough together and they will share there electrons aka bind together now you say and why don't stick 2 metal pieces together if they touch well at first the oxide layer that is a spacer between also even if same atoms get to bind the strength that holds the pieces together is not even noticeable by hand and a not perfect surface will only make it worse But I know 2 cases of coold welding high precision meesurment blocks (they ar so smooth that they stick together by the atmosphere and if not seperated after use the trapped air in between the surfaces will escape and well Invar is an 2/3 iron 1/3 nickel alloy so double the Ni containt of stainless Steel just leaking Chrome you can imagine the basically non existing oxide layer And the second is/are stainless steel bolds and nuts they cann weld together after tighting the stainless prevents oxides from forming and the pressure with the movement against each other ripping up the old oxid layer and making them fiz
Whoa... that triangular phase-space diagram was eye-opening. There's _so much room_ to explore in the middle of that! Who knows what kind of superconductivity or other weird properties we might unlock, especially with very finely controlled deposition like what Alpha Phoenix did for his Ph.D.
I’ve now worked on a couple projects involving this field. Something I found interesting is how different research groups define HEAs. I worked with a HEA that had the presence of an intermetallic which some definitions of HEA do not define as a HEA (not solid solution). Another alloy only had three of the five Cantor alloy elements in equal concentrations, making it a medium entropy alloy (Smix5 elements. I found all three of these alloys fascinating, and all had very unique properties not found in conventional alloys. Complex concentrated alloys (CCAs) can be used to describe all three of those (as all HEAs are CCAs), but it has much less of a ring. Many pioneers in the field stick to the strict definition of HEAs, but I find does not ring as well to people outside the field. So I somewhat incorrectly refer to all as HEAs
Ah neat! I didn't realize there was such a range of interpretation about how these are defined. I did see a few alternate naming schemes (multiple-component alloy and the like) but didn't realize it was more than just a naming thing. Very cool, thanks for sharing the extra details!
I've never played with depositing on glass, but when depositing on Gallium Nitride (Or AlGaAs) I remember an adhesion layer of titanium or nickel was always used. Even without annealing, I think those were just kinda stickier first layers. In this case do you really want the alloy to remain stuck during the process or not? - I know almost nothing about high entropy alloys and this is way cool. I love the idea of using the laser to create extremely small melt and quench areas. Not sure what your sputtering setup looks like so this ranges from "impossible" to "really annoying", but I'm curious if you tried a very coarse digital alloying where you'd lay down repeated thinner layers 123123123 rather than 111222333. of course it looked like your laser was pretty effectively melting all of it at once, so maybe this would make no difference at all, but I figured it was worth a question! if most of the blobs you found adhered were in mechanically adjacent layers, maybe that might tell. Cool stuff!
♥ Hi hi! I was sorta hoping you had a bunch of crystal and metallurgy corrections that I could pin to the video 😂 Yeah not sure about the adhesion issue, if it would be desirable for the film to stick better or not. Or if it would even matter... the laser process is pretty aggressive and might do the same everytime regardless. Dunno! Probably the right thing to do is to blap it all off the slide into solution, then repeatedly irradiate the solution itself (focal point in the middle of the vial) to re-process the flakes and particles. The "igital alloying idea is definitely doable although falls in "really annoying" category :) I've been looking into it because I want to play with nanolaminates of alternating layers. You can define sputter sequences to run automatically and the machine seems to use a simple XML file to define those sequences, so I think I can create a long sequence and import it to run. The major issue is that it only has two sputter heads, so if I wanted 121212 it's easy but 123123 would require cycling the chamber and waiting for it to pump back down (solid hour or two for the oxidation-sensitive metals). (I'm working on a pulsed laser deposition setup with the new vac chamber, might be easier with that system. Not as nice of layers, but easier to deposit many different materials at once) But on that note, would it be possible to anneal thin layers into an alloy? Say deposit alternating layers that are only 1-2nm thick, stack up 50-100nm of layers and then anneal it all together. Would the metal have enough mobility at temperature to reconfigure into a crystal, or is that just a recipe for everyone separating out into distinct phases?
Dave H I was going to say that adhesion to glass will be better if the first layer is Cr or Ti. The layer can be very thin. I don't know how well Ni would work.
I mean, your "almost nothing" is probably considerably more than the majority of the comments on here tryharding to sound knowledgeable. xD Also, I love how I can hear your voice in your writing.
@@BreakingTaps Have you tried to use laser deposition to deposit all five elements at once? It seems like that would make a High Entropy metal alloy layer.
@@BreakingTaps "would it be possible to anneal thin layers into an alloy?" It's something smiths have to watch out for when making a pattern welded (damascus) billet. Too many folds & too much heat gives you an ugly mottled alloy blade instead of a beautiful weld pattern.
The cooling rate is crucial in forming phases in these alloys, and I think that the way you produced those "HEAs" contributed to the unsuccessful attempt. Rapid cooling rates are not favourable for creating solid solutions. As you mentioned, arc melting is a better way, or induction melting is also a great way of making small lab-scale melts. Also, you picked very different metals that do not like to form a homogeneous solid solution. The FeNiCuAlZr alloy has a
@@janami-dharmam High entropy alloys have crystalline structures, typically BCC or FCC or the mixture of these. The thing that you are talking about is metallic glasses (or amorphous alloys). They do not have a periodic crystal structure. Metallic glasses and HEAs are two different things, however, sometimes people refer to MGs as the predecessors of HEAs.
Soon as I saw your shop, instant sub, you're not just some person reading off studyings and tainting them with random opinions, you obviously practice something with metallurgy or material science. Very cool
Allegedly, in Dungeons and Dragons, Adamantine is made by mixing a ferrous ore called adamant with electrum and silver in significant proportions with each other. So, iron, whatever other element adamant contains, silver, and gold in relatively equal amounts? Sounds like a HEA to me. It’s even canonically got an extremely high melting point and is considered extremely easy to mess up when making, which tracks with what I’ve read about the processes of making various other HEAs.
I am definitely going to add this concept to a fantasy setting I’m world building. This is absolutely something that would appear to magical but is actually something scientific.
Seems similar to metallic glass (amorphous metal). Look into how they are manufactured. They are quickly chilled before the alloy has a chance to separate and recrystallize. Interesting video on metallic glass was posted by Tim on the Grand Illusions channel. Video is titled "Atomic Trampoline".
Funny you mention this...in the early 2010s when bulk metallic glass research started to fizzle out (outside of magnetics) a lot of metallic glass researchers shuffled over into HEA research.
Haha, yeah, the descriptions here about HEA's (or whatever we're calling them) reminded me of some of the interest we had around amorphous metals. One of my colleagues was looking at a family of alloys when I finished my M.S. in 2008. Wonder what came of it. I know corrosion resistance (crack propagation) was a big motivation.
I have to say, as a materials science student, I absolutely love your content. You are able to communicate these complex phenomena clearly and in a way that makes sense to people who haven't taken years of classes on the subject. Thank you for this quality content and keep up the good work!
Foundry metallurgist here...great video! As much as I'm familiar with this class of materials (not much, to be honest), everything sounded about right. I'll add that there are at least some casting alloys, mostly specialty stainless steel alloys in my experience, that are ternary and have significant amounts of the major constituent elements: -Heat-resistant stainless steel. Although this is generally a broad class of materials, composition-wise, the more highly-alloyed grades have 15-30% Cr, 15-50% Ni, and 20-60% Fe. The balance of Cr and Ni, in particular, can be used to tailor the material to oxidizing or reducing environments, improve resistance to sulfide and/or chloride corrosion, adjust the maximum service temperature, and adjust the microstructure to improve cracking resistance under cyclic loads. Carbon is an important feature of pretty much all of these, as chromium carbides help improve high-temperature strength, creep resistance, and fatigue properties. -Extreme heat-resistant alloys. These are an offshoot of the standard heat-resistant grades that keep the high levels of Cr, Ni, and Fe and then add usually Co, W, and Nb in concentrations of 5-15%. -There are plenty of alloys like the manganese austenitic stainless steels and high-chromium white cast irons that have excellent wear resistance and decent corrosion resistance, but needing high levels of both of those things end up in the realm of certain specialty alloys. 30+% Ni, 30% Cr, a smorgasbord of other elements like Mn and Cu in the 1-5% range, and 5-20% Fe forms helpful intermetallic compounds that boost wear resistance while still having excellent corrosion resistance thanks to the nickel and chrome.
I wonder if we can finally achieve superconductivity without those subzero temperatures being a prerequisite. That would open up a whole new dimension of possibilities! One thing comes to mind is magnetic levitation devices, true hoverboards!
We've had real floating (through magnetic repulsion+attraction that quantum locks it in place just like superconductors but stabilized in a different manner than the effect that locks superconductors to magnets) hoverboards for almost a decade now. They'll always require a ferromagnetic material to stand on, (or an impossibly diamagnetic material which can't physically exist afaik) so it's as real as it gets already
This whole field is fascinating to me, and I'm 47 and this is the first time I've seen or learned any of this before. how cool -- thank you content creator and thank youtube for recommending it
As someone who tig welds 5052 aluminum , I have always wondered about the process of making it 6061 vs 5052. This helped me understand it a lot better, thank you!
12:28 on that note, is it possible to intentionally use alloyed sputtering targets to pre-mix the metals? Maybe that will increase the entropy in the final product
I was wondering this too. Would it be possible to have multiple sputtering heads in a large chamber pointing in the same direction so you get mixing in the plasma phase?
Yep! But with a caveat. Metals sputter at different rates, even if they are alloyed together. So the mixture that lands on the substrate is often different than the mixture in the sputtering target. But otherwise it's definitely possible. Can also mix "in the chamber" as @seeigecannon suggested, or do things like introduce process gasses to react with the plasma in-flight (typically used to make oxides).
@@BreakingTaps Could you also magnetically trap the particles and stir them together before depositing them? I'm thinking of inductive levitating metals, where you have two opposing yoke coils made up of a single wire, preferably insulated, and one could pulse it to "trap" and then dump the mixture onto the surface.
Suggestions: Do it twice. Ball mill your results from the first pass, and then laser the powder. Your layers are acting as separators, so you'll need to homogenize the substrate a bit. Perhaps codeposition is a better route. Multiple boats, or a heterogeneous target for sputtering?
Super fascinating stuff. I love all the interesting fields and topics you bring to our attention. Also... a high energy ball mill sounds like it would be one of the most deafening pieces of equipment imaginable. haha
0:27 I saw the full video of the restoration of that exact watch on the picture. I cannot believe I just found yet another screenshot taken from that very specific video inside another unrelated video for a third time this week. This is wak!
I love how much fun you have exploring these ideas and sharing the results with us. I equally love going to your comments and watching Cunningham's law in action. I learn so much from both. Keep the videos coming!
It makes sense the tungsten didn't work, considering its melting point. Also, it would have been nice if you had talked a bit about the exceptions to the intermetallics thing, like invar, or some brasses and bronzes.
Yeah that was a bit of a miss on my part. I had originally wanted to talk about those and binary eutectics like Pb-Sn (or even how most stainless alloys are a bit different since some of the components are interstitial)... but I forgot 😅 Perhaps in a future video! And tbh, I have some more reading to do on my side, some of these concepts are still fuzzy to me and not sure I could explain them coherently yet!
@@BreakingTaps I didn't even think about stainless, 18-8 is less than 75% iron. Also, I've read the word plenty, but I still don't really understand what a eutectic mix is. I know it applies to more than just metals.
Your discovery of the difficulty of getting the Tungsten to combine, with the hypothesis that it's because it's a refractory metal, gives me an idea. Take [ whatever data that represents how much of that wavelength of laser energy is captured and turned to heat] for each metal. Then lay down the metals in order of their [ laser energy required to boil ], so that the most energy demanding materials are the first ones in the line of fire. Then, when you hit them with the laser, the low-melting/high-absorption layers don't get over-energized before the more difficult layers are fully zapped. It may also be worth finding some sort of deliberate "stop" layer, that will keep the stack in place longer before separating from the glass, or react away the oxygen that may dislodge from the surface.
EDX at home and dual target magnetron sputtering ! That's a dream ! Keep going in that direction, and keep feeding me with very very interesting and out of the box ideas ! Maybe try to start from a liquid solution of various metal precursors and apply an atmospheric plasma on it to reduce everything at the same time.
The way you should approach this is to use something like cymatics on the substrate while you are sputtering, along with much thinner layers. The goal would be to alter the probability densities of the ions in target areas. I just dropped out of community college because the DEA has intentionally mismanaged the adderall supply.
The instant you brought up intermetallic compounds i just know how terrible they are. From a jewelry standpoint it can be the death of a mix which i made a lot of mistakes with. I've accidentally made intermetallics while trying to save money for certain alloys which ended up being more work than just using the expensive version. Definitely not fun at such a scale where you want the metal to stay ductile instead of being so brittle it breaks apart when you look at it
I work in a production job and there IS a process we use. And having been iq tested several times and knowing where i stand amongst people percentile-wise, i was given a laugh at your comment about your frustrations. Not one of derision at all. But i watch people all day try to performatively bypass the process (which isnt perfect by the way but is established and was done so by lots of people who are fairly switched on and have been focused on the primary priorities) to serve one part of a complex goal or their own fancy. I had a unit come to me today for testing. I had rejected it yesterday to repair for a non conformity. The response of the repair person was a repair on a different nonconformity. I already knew what they had fudged but tested it anyway out of curiosity. The repair guy on my shift comes over and does the equivalent of thumbing the scale to pass it. This is on my name. So i let him. It passed. At which point he buzzed off amd i retested it checking the original noncom and the part of the scale he thumbed. As it happens it still passed. And it truly passed. Theres only so many ways to fake my guage or externally fool it. I wansnt doing them and since they dont require the more definitive test either on the client side or the provider side, it passed. Theres no established way for me to test this, even though that's the end customer use case. But, it would have been faster just to change the noncom part. And it would have better served quality to send the whole unit back to reprocess. But it passed. All that being said i like the way you think because you at least understand that it would have been better to do what you ougtta. And THAT being said, dont quit that trying to work around bit. It is how better methods are made. As long as its tempered by ethics.
@@metamorphicorder well your high iq ... i presume high but lol, may want to edit your grammer before posting... just saying if your going to exclaim your brilliance perhaps an edit is in order. Lmfao
@@metamorphicorder To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand intermetallics. And yes, by the way, i DO have a high entropy alloy tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid 😎
You might consider changing the precursor target to have many smaller layer stacks to begin with, so that when you ablate, you are much more mixed to begin with. Also, if film adhesion to the target is troublesome, you could try to start with a layer that does adhere well as a buffer layer. I had to do this with some heterostructures we made that needed AlOx, and Au. I've been told by my PI that a Ti buffer layer (or Cr) is good at getting Au to adhere to Si, so maybe it'd help with the Cu layer as well. Last, I can imagine that with 5+ or more elements all in similar proportions, the phase space is massive, and creating the same thing twice could be hard with this method depending on your level of control over deposition rates.
When I was in the military, I was sitting in on a production meeting & I remembered the Lockheed rep mention something about “unique atomic geometry alloys” or “UAGA’s”, since that day I have not been able to find any literature on this terminology either in industry or in academia. This leads me to believe it’s some sort of proprietary product(s) of theirs. Ofcourse this was during the time when the F-35 fifth Gen fighter was coming online. It’s pretty rare to hear corporate figureheads mention such things with such specificity when discussing big picture outlooks but, I specifically remember that terminology because it stuck out from the overall topic of discussion.
Have they tried loading that stuff into a gun and shooting it? Or maybe get a mantis shrimp to punch it. These aren't entirely serious suggestions but I also wouldn't be completely surprised if they worked.
I'm a sociology guy so a lot of this went over my head but material science and metallurgy is one of my favorite topics as a hobby. I love learning about what we can do and how we get there
Should we expect the same metals to be good for high entropy alloys as are used in normal metallurgy? Or might idk tantalum, antimony, samarium, strontium and scandium turn out to work really well together?
As far as I can tell, it's wide open across most metals and some non-metals! I.e. here's a paper that made DyErGdHoLuScTbY (aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5051514). There are quite a few variants out there using refractory metals too, like WNbMoTaV. If I understand correctly, the refractory metals are under a lot of active research right now because they can retain their material properties at very high temperatures, so lots of commercial interest there.
The most incredible and amazing video about material science that I have seen ever. Thank for share with us Please continue uploading videos like this!
Just wondering, could performing metal film deposition using multiple metals at once in a single chamber achieve something similar to laser ablation? It seems like it could reduce the process to a single step. Would the particles be too large?
@AlphaPhoenix Not sure if I can even tag other people in a discussion on YT. But he does molecular beam epitaxy IIRC, which would be the way to go for mixing stuff on the atomic level
Wow. I did a lot of chemistry and physics and even mechanics, at school, but for some reason I never was interested in metals, or curious about them. They were just THERE, you know? I made some ski sharpening tools from 6063 Aluminium (with an I, please!) and spent some time at the milling machine. And now, after 57 years of life, you go and trigger a desperate need in me to learn more about metals, with just one video. Thank you so much, I think! As long as I don't get consumed by this, it's all good. :)
Fascinating ! as always, do you have some new equipment in the lab that you haven't shown ? I don't think I've seen the sputter coater shown at the beginning, pretty good results I think for first try please keep up this great work...cheers.
I'm impressed. My best alloying tech was making an oxygen deprived atmoshere, in my propane forge. This is fascinating, I wasn't aware of this type of alloy. Thanks!
Were you ever in academia doing funded research? Your level of familiarity with the literature on a variety of materials science and optical topics is consistently exceptionally high.
Thanks! Just on the molecular bio side of things, so not very helpful to the content of the channel. Otherwise just a lot of skimming review articles and watching lectures to get up to speed. All very shallow knowledge though. Mile wide, inch deep sort of thing 😄
i accidently was talking about this topic a few times recebtly without knowing any proper terms or research and now thanks to this video i can go learn more. Why we focus so much on minor changes that feel safely close to the hydrogen model and fail to play with considering how materials can cascade properties as it is forced to sort itself out. I know my intuition is much more geared for this kind of chemistry!
The effect of Chromium on this process does make a lot of sense due to just how good it is at giving and receiving electrons since it occurs in nature with 4 stable isotopes. It allows it to kind of ghost its way into the crystalline structure just by gaining or losing some electrons. I wonder how Tin, an element with 10 stable isotopes, would contribute to a mix like this.
@@baranzenovich It's more that the element atoms have more possible configurations that are stable, which tends to make the element more flexible in terms of giving and receiving electrons from their shell. An isotope of an element has interesting properties, stable isotopes even moreso since they don't experience radioactive decay. An isotope with fewer neutrons has a stronger positive charge, meaning that the electron shell around the atom is more likely to attract any free radicals into its sphere of influence. An isotope with more neutrons has a weaker positive charge which will cause the shell to more willingly cast off electrons to reach stability. In metallurgy, with the formation of crystalline structures as the mixture cools, you'll find that these varied energy states allow the element to more easily 'slot' into place forming a stable alloy instead of beading up and separating. There is a reason why the first alloy that humanity ever mastered was made using copper (a transition metal) as the base and tin (an element with so many stable configurations that it's actually funny). It was an alloy that was ridiculously easy to get right.
@@shadowtheimpure isotopes of an element have fewer / more neutrons, which dont contribute to the positive charge, but the same number of protons, which DO contribute to charge - so i dont think isotopes have a big influence on behaviour in alloys
@@raiyiar doesnt seem outside of the realm of possibility - heavier isotopes of the same element will have greater bond enthalpies due to a lower ZPE. Unsure on the impact of alloys, but in organic chemistry deuterated compounds are incredibly useful for probing reactions for this very reason.
@@benwhitehair5291 well yea, hydrogen has an atomic mass of 1, and deuterium has an atomic mass of 2, so deuterated substances can have sliiightly different behaviour (but i dont think to the extent, that Y-H bonds would be possible in one situation, and Y-D bonds at the same position are impossible) - contrast that with tin, with an atomic mass of around 120 - even if an atom had 10 more neutrons, that would change the atomic mass by less than 10%, which is not nearly as drastic as the doubling with deuterium (or tripling with tritium)
To get more coverage in your analysis of particles: use some computer vision algo to segment out particles -> make features for each particle -> use unsupervised clustering algo to segregate similar particles into a cluster
Could you layer your sample multiple times then use that as the source to sputter a new slide such that the single atoms are mixed through sputtering and more evenly distributed onto the sample? Maybe have to do a grid checkerboard for the source vs. Plane layers.
Hmm, potentially! With a caveat: metals will sputter at different rates (i.e. silver sputters a lot faster than nickel), so you'd have to do some work to make sure the target sputtered the quantities you wanted. I think something like a checkerboard would work best, otherwise it'll just "eat" through the layers one-by-one and you'll end up with layers on the sample. But in principle something like a checkerboard could work! That's a neat idea, I might see about trying that...
@@BreakingTaps Perhaps the different sputtering rates could be counteracted a bit by strategic layering of the initial layers. So for example if silver sputters faster than nickel then you put silver as the lower layer. Then again I'm not 100% sure of the exact sputtering method.
Good work, man. You taught me some stuff. Some of it, I can even use. Check your laser, man. If you want smaller sizes, maybe try small taps, with the laser. Control your local energy gradient. It may be, also, that you've gotta decrease your ambient temperature. Obviously, you should try these ideas, in reverse, too. Maybe you're too cold, or maybe you're too hot, but if you can control your laser output, then control your laser output. Control it, all over the map, until you learn something. lol Intriguing. Thanks.
You just gained so much respect for humbling yourself.. the dog on the computer.. lol love him/her/it ❤️ Metals, alloys are 100% my favorite subject. Endless possibilities. Set up a vacuum chamber, or even just TIG puddle. Couple at a time adding one by one from there.. idk lol 😆
love how you can do such cutting edge stuff in your garage... love your vids also, what if you make nanoparticle solutions of each metal separately, and then combine the solutions afterward, mix thoroughly, and then boil of solvent and sinter/arc furnace it?
I suspect that could work! Would be hard to generate a lot of material, this laser process struggles to make even micrograms of material. But if you had enough of the individual nanoparticles you could probably mix them together either with the laser itself, or with something like an arc furnace.
I have found a way to cut Granite using Aluminum due to the unusual properties materials have while under the influence of ultrasonic Vibrations. The strength of the materials changes similar to how its easy to break a pencil but gets harder and harder to do as you get increasingly shorter. With proper technique and tuning I have yet to find a material which it is incapable of scratching. More important than what the target surface is make of it is state of polish. The more polished the surface the higher the frequency needed and more precise the tuning required. Its crazy to be honest and I hope to be able to develop some sensors to make more quantitative sense of the effects I am witnessing. If I had your skills it would be a cake walk :D
I am curious if some of your Allows would express unusual properties if they are under the influence of ultrasound also as they should either solidify with bonds which under normal circumstances would be energetically unfavorable or more importantly in my opinion for half of the wave the particle will essentially be in zero gravity as it would be falling with that of the Earth with the other half of the sin wave providing the energy to get it up there. Obviously it would all happen very fast but it might help to ultrasound these samples as they are still liquid.
Super interesting stuff, I've seen a lot of comments about using different deposition methods for assembling your starting material and it made me immediately thing of AlphaPheonix and his PhD work. The way he described the machine they used for growing metallic crystals was like a giant spray painting machine that painted with different elements. Link to the video explaining it - th-cam.com/video/bnqQyeqGIBE/w-d-xo.html Seems like it could be one way to get a much more intimately mixed starting material if that is found to be important for the process. Cheers for the really neat video on a subject I hadn't heard about before!
I don't know much about these processes but the idea of sputtering all of them at the the same time popped into my head. Maybe even by depositing them, breaking up the product, turning it into the raw stock, using that for more sputtering and then repeating this process till they are all homogeneous
This feels like something i would have dreamed up as a kid in highschool. "What if we took all the metals and mixed them together to get a super metal!" *and it works*
I can already predict the next step after this, which are LOW entropy alloys, where each atom has a predetermined location, giving it the desired properties at any given position in the material.
It's like oil and water, you can't randomly drop and expect they fuse all together by a chance. On the other side if you can see even distribution, but different proportions, you can detect what combination in % give you the best fusion without leftovers.
Suggestion: Melt your alloy materials together in a crucible that's inside the stator of an induction motor so you can use the rotating magnetic field to thoroughly mix the metals together. If you want to get fancy, use the stator from a delta-wound 3-ohase motor and a programmable 3-phase power supply that lets you adjust voltage, current, and frequency so you can tweak the rotation speed and intensity of the mixing effect. A surround sound card fed into a trio of audio amps connected to the phase windings would probably work for cheap and let you try a variety of mixing strategies to see what works best. Like maybe mixing some high frequencies in with the fundamental rotation frequency for extra agitation...
If your issue is thermal (quick quenching), you could try mounting your setup on a peltier plate for cooling. May also require a vacuum to get temps really low. Not sure how the laser would interact, but I think having lower temps would help for larger particle sizes.
I used to know a guy who was doing a PhD into using high entropy alloys in high radiation environments, like nuclear reactors and especially fusion reactors where materials are going to be exposed to a high neutron flux. Theory being that knocking an atom out of position in a high entropy alloy is going to cause a lot less problems than in a standard material because the relative change in environment is so much smaller. Definitely interesting stuff
This is pretty common for HEAs. Many of them will form two distinct phases, whether that's FCC+FCC, BCC+BCC, HCP+HCP, or some combination thereof. In fact, there is a subset of HEAs called "Eutectic" High Entropy Alloys, which are a eutectic mixture of two phases in a high entropy alloy.
Interesting how listening to this made think of forming 3D printer style "spool wires" of the HEAs at controlled thicknesses as an intended manufacturing medium for creating some production consistency to these materials. Which then potentially, dovetailing, leads straight into utilizing the 3D printer concept for applying the new materials typing.
Sputter metal alongside a laser, just like a laserprinter does, this would fuse the metal on a surface. Now do this with several metals, each their own laser. Have the lasers come together at the same spot, to fuse the sputtered metals. Maybe this would be the new laser sintering, building metal shapes and creating alloys on the fly.
We’re doing experiments with a University where a mix of elemental powders are being applied using a LENS machine. That mixes the elements as they are being deposited and “welded” to the surface of a forge tool. Seems to provide improved wear characteristics to the tool but whether the result is cost effective is yet to be determined.
the cheap way to find something you want probably will be in junkyard pod metal crucible? they melt everything together everyday in large quantity. there are always some metal beans leftover in the bottom of the crucible. sometimes it is as hard as a coffin nail, and some times it has other properties such as high temperature. and it is free to acquire these slag for sample if you know the owner.
4:17 huh that sounds like a really good material for making swords. Lol imagine if there was a high entropy alloy as hard as sapphire but as ductile as steel
I would think that mixing purified metal powders together, flooding them with a noble gas, and then blasting them with an electrical arc until thoroughly molten would be the most practical way to make a macroscopic sample of a high-entropy alloy.
But that would be so costly... i think there is lots of ideas like these But none of them actually being worked on because they are just economically not feasible
Like the novel approach, perhaps try Niobium instead of tungsten, if your set on using 1 refractory metal, it plays much nicer with cu + ni + au + ti, check out the nb-ti phase to see what I mean. Works with platinum to a point also, not sure about Fe, zr, cr. Tungsten hates everything. Niobium or Tantalum preferred for welding compound joints in my line if work.
BTW when I was working in a related industry we started off by plasma etching the surface of the material before adding metal, specifically to get better adhesion during physical vapor deposition.
Instead of a liquid to suspend and cool the metal elements, what would occur if you ran the laser over the plate in a supercooled environment (somewhere close to absolute zero) I would think this would cause them to all cool at once creating a uniformly mixed alloy. I’m no expert, just wondering.
wow. I would definitely want to try the in-solution method. you could use inkjet technology to 3d print a structure out of metal salt solution, which presumably is perfectly mixed, and have an evaporation/sintering laser following the liquid. Might take a while to make anything big though edit: Or, maybe dissolve all the metals in mercury, then flash off the mercury. Or what about some sort of gel with a high concentration of metal salts; could be perhaps cast and then baked to make like a metal aerogel?
A suggestion. Coat 2 materials on each other and peal of using laser. Harvest the resulting particles. On a new glass coat the harvested material and add the extra metal. Laser sinter and harvest again. With this method you add one material at a time. Hope it works. 🤞
Have you heard of computed axial lithography? It's a method to essentially 3D print something all at once instead of layer by layer. It looks very cool.
Really loved the "here be dragons" part of the diagram. Its always the best part of any technical discussion. To me, it seems like heat feels like the wrong way to try and get these results. To my amateur eye, the problem with this use of heat is that heat is going to effect material according to particle mass. Basically, there's no great way to heat both A and B, but not mixtures of (A+B). Using pulsed lasers for fast annealing does mitigate this issue, but ultimately the application method keeps the mixture's response to heat "between" A's and B's response. Instead, I would aim for some kind of resonance, frequency-based heating method. I think in that case it would be possible to preferentially heat A and B over A+B, for example using something like Induction Smelting, Microwave Resonance, something along those lines. Its well known that atomic iron (eg hemoglobin) isn't magnetic, but iron domains are. Using some distinguishing feature like this, it should be possible to basically only heat the iron in a material that's in bulk form, while not heating already-mixed iron, of course depending on what's being mixed in.
The EDS image of the fun octahedral particle makes it look like the Cr is more concentrated to those round surface spots. It be interesting to see if those spots are just surface level chrome oxide formations or if they were actual Chrome that wasn’t soluble in the mixture. That could give you an idea of the mass fraction of elements in the alloy
Agreed! There's also a possibility that it's under the particle. I didn't mention in the video, but at this electron beam accelerating voltage (20keV) the beam can travel a pretty significant distance through the sample. So for smaller particles it's possible the beam shoots through the particle and hits something sitting under it, causing an element to appear in the spectrum. One of the reasons I was trying to find particles sitting directly on the silicon wafer substrate. In real research they'd use a (S)TEM where this is less of a problem.
![กี่หมื่นฟ้า | Your Sky Series EP.1 [1/4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vLGjxFL6U_I/mqdefault.jpg)
Really neat video. Garage electron microscopy is badass and your channel does a fantastic job popularizing concepts which are not widely known in the pop-science world. There are some places where I have to say this video could really be shored up technically, though. The big one is that, in my professional opinion (my postgrad work is all in HEA alloy design), the alloys produced here don't meet the usual working definitions for high entropy/multi-principal element alloys. The laser sputtering process you're using produces very non-equilibrium structures, because of the very fast cooling rate as well as intrinsic size effects. Most "true" HEAs produce a single solid solution phase, or a dual-phase structure, at equilibrium conditions. Or, in some newer definitions that have started to get used in the last 5 years or so, it just has to make a "simple", intermetallic free microstructure when subjected to a high temperature homogenization treatment followed by a water quench. There is a lot of debate still about whether the single-phase HEAs like CoCrFeMnNi are *really* single phase if you take them to equilibrium, but that's way off in the weeds. The other big point I'd correct is that "high entropy alloy" has turned out to be a sort of un-useful name for these alloys. The idea that the mixing entropy stabilizes the single-phase structure, which you talk about around 3:10-3:30, has fallen out of favor for metals. I believe for ceramics it is still considered useful. Very curious readers might try and sci-hub themselves a copy of Dan Miracle & Oleg Senkov's massive critical review article 5 years back: "A critical review of high entropy alloys and related concepts," Acta Materialia 122 (2017).
Rad, thanks for the extra insight! Just gonna pin your comment to the top for the time being, seems easier than rephrasing into an addendum of corrections :)
Taking a look at "A critical review of high entropy alloys and related concepts" now, cheers for the tip!
the definition of HEA is a big debate indeed, I believe the name is too simplistic :) To my understanding, HEA = a single solid solution, since the configurational entropy (which is only one contribution for the total entropy) is supposed to stabilise it; in the end, the choice of metals is quite limited to suit this definition, you maybe have an handful of systems that fulfil it. But if you design an multi-element alloy with multiple phases, then it would be best suited to call it chemical complex alloy or something similar. This field is really interesting!
@@loicp.1487 HEAs don't actually have that much mixing entropy. For an equiatomic alloy of N components, you get a molar mixing entropy of S = R * ln(N) where R is ideal gas constant. (you can do the rearrangement of terms in the proof from statmech en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_of_mixing) Natural log is not a fast growing function. Because of this, many people working in the field, including me, prefer the term 'multi-principal metal alloy' . They still have many excited properties, but the mixing entropies are not one of them.
@@BreakingTaps I wish I had known you were making this video, HEAs/MPEAs are my major focus now. You could have picked my brain or I could have connected you with a more hands-on expert.
That said, if you are working on a corrosion video in the future, I could connect you with some experts that love telling stories.
@@MichaelWatersJ maybe I was not clear enough, sorry… I was trying to make a difference between HEAs and CCAs/MPMAs. My point was, if you go back to the early Yeh’s papers, he clearly states that the mixing entropy is the reason of the existence of such solid solutions. It has been demonstrated otherwise since (not every combination of 5 elements gives a solid solution), and I am aware there are tons of metallic alloys that exhibit higher values of entropy than HEAs. Sorry if my message was source of misunderstanding
I read that some Japanese researchers made a high entropy alloy of all (or most? I can't remember) the platinum group metals. The super alloy was an extremely powerful catalyst for electrochemical redox reactions (they had hydrogen fuel cells in mind for this alloy). But more interesting than the material was the preparation process, they took all the constituent metals in dissolved salt form, (I think it was mostly nitrates?) And poured the mixture into a reducing solution while stirring. The metals reduced together and formed particles of the high entropy alloy. The process seems extremely easy to replicate but I am not going to buy all of the platinum group metals, I am not a billionaire lol. But I do wonder if the same chemical method would work for other metals?
Perhaps something akin to electrostatic attraction could allow for thin films of different metals to be sprayed and wiped off in thin layers. Then, take your thin cake of metals, and crush it like damascus.
It might be harder with metals with dramatically different galvanic potentials, where the easier to reduce salts would act like a sacrificial anode on a ship in reverse and precipitate first.
@@forresthsu582 true, but if a solution was reducing enough it might minimize that issue. Starting with metals that have very similar electrochemical potentials would be a good place to start tho. There are some insanely reducing chemicals out there tho and it would be fun to try to get this to work with very weird mixtures of metals
@@doctorpurple5173 or borrow CERN for about a million hours...
@@CharlieLOL that sounds easier, I'll go ahead and do that
I work in Aluminium research and the intermetallics in 3xxx and other alloys are very important in achieving the large deformations seen in deep drawing and other wrought aluminium processes. Yes, they can have some undesirable properties, but also some very important ones.
2:27 For those who don’t know, the sea monsters on old maps weren’t just for decoration; they were “actually” there and should be sailed around.
For sure! One of my ancestors was ate by one.
Woo hoo! I'm gonna go find me some mermaids! Someone get King Ferdinand II on the phone!
**later that day**
"Dude this king guy is an IDIOT! Killer party bro! This is the life! Jessica bring me some more white pixie dust! Weeeeheeeewww!*"
*lower lip curled american hollering.
Yep, we gleaned that from the commentary.
@A channel “largely unexplored” is complete nonsense. We’ve explored and mapped most of the ocean and it’s floors. It’s mostly empty waters.
As someone who did a part of his M.Sc. on High entropy alloys (HEAs) and is currently doing his Ph.D. on it, I have some comments to mention that might be useful for you:
1- The choice of elements is one of the most important aspects of making high entropy alloys. The two most successful alloys (Cantor and Senkov) are made of elements with very similar valence electron number and atomic radius (and some other properties). This similarity prevents the formation of intermetallic phases inside the HEAs that gives them those exceptional properties. The elements you chose are highly unlikely to form HEAs due to this dissimilarity.
2- As other people mentioned, the conventional explanation for entropy in HEAs effect has proven not entirely correct. To be more specific, the free Gibbs energy for the formation of intermetallic phases is made of both entropy and enthalpy parts and while the addition of more than 5 elements can increase the entropy of the alloy, it will also increase the chance of formation of intermetallic phases due to lower enthalpy of formation. Thus, maybe trying the same method for a lower number of elements (4 or 5) would be more successful.
3- The production method plays a significant role in the quality of high entropy alloys. For example, many of the HEAs with refractory metals are highly sensitive to oxidation and can flake off very quickly (called pesting). Also, the lattice mismatch can cause stresses that can break down samples while cooling down. On the other hand, I have seen many metallic glasses with high entropy compositions. So it is doable.
Overall, excellent video and good luck!
Does high entropy tend to imply high energetic cost? The enthalpy part makes me think yes. This is a science language trick. We've always known that a good Smith makes magic metal given a long enough time with enough fuel in a hot enough furnace. That's always been the case.
The amount of detail in this video for people quite new to alloys is amazing. It's also quite clear.
Thank you.
Sound like a good excuse to request a microgravity experiment on the ISS. Aslo what happens if you deposit your layers as thin as possible, even at the risk of incomplete coverage for each layer?
In theory if you have really good control over the sputtering process, you're approaching something similar to Atomic Layer Deposition or Molecular Beam Epitaxy! Can basically lay down precise layers of atoms and build the crystal from the ground up. I think that still tends to give you a layered alloy so it'll be slightly different than a more amorphous sample derived from something like an arc furnace or laser. But could be a really useful starting material, i.e. take that and anneal it to let the atoms shift around some.
@@BreakingTaps Ah yes, I wondered if something like annealing would cause useful amounts of diffusion too. I guess it depends on how long you hold the sample at the high temperature in an inert atmosphere or vacuum?
@@BreakingTaps Can you have multiple sputter targets at the same time?... Multiple beams at the same molecular transfer rate could create a near perfect mix on the substrate.
In my adolescent mind I don't like to embarrass myself, but I can't help it, but what is the difference between the lasers you are using as compared to the plasma furnace that is supposed be a major change economically from the electrode furnaces now in commercial use.
Is it possible for deposited material to be proactively different than a concentration of energy of the laser?
Fascinating stuff even for a dullard like myself, keep it coming, even Goodyear stumbled across something novel while cluelessly experimenting.
A couple years back I brewed up a theoretical process for making a high entropy alloy in bulk with relatively uncomplicated procedures using powdered metals with appropriate phase transition temperatures in a welded steel canister (similar to techniques used by some to make damascus steel). Idk if it would work tbh, haven't had the shop space or correct tools to attempt since I dreamt it up, but I call theoretical product "chaos silver" in my head lol
Cool.
Do you think exposing the particles to a strong magnetic field while "forging" would have an effect?
@@thebogsofmordor7356 possibly yes. In my considerations, I've sought to eliminate as many engineering complications as possible, applying such a field within a furnace introduces quite a few difficulties; melt times would have to be 4-6 hours minimum I think to maximize chances of success. Another point of consideration is how you cool it (quickly to the lowest solidifying temp of the constituent elements and then gradually to room temp over 2-3 hours is my idea in order to maximize homogenous crystal formation although there are a few different permutations of procedures that would likely need experimented with before success) during which applying static and alternating fields (electric and magnetic) could produce beneficial effects and would be much easier from an engineering standpoint.
@@thebogsofmordor7356 dunno, but would be a great experiment !
Mhm the idea isn't bad but you would need singel atom metal dust to generate a HEA also forget the heating over the liquidus that would lead to phase separation like we have seen in the first nano droplets BT has shown us and it is absolutely unnecessary ever heard of coold welding just bring the metal atoms near enough together and they will share there electrons aka bind together now you say and why don't stick 2 metal pieces together if they touch well at first the oxide layer that is a spacer between also even if same atoms get to bind the strength that holds the pieces together is not even noticeable by hand and a not perfect surface will only make it worse
But I know 2 cases of coold welding high precision meesurment blocks (they ar so smooth that they stick together by the atmosphere and if not seperated after use the trapped air in between the surfaces will escape and well Invar is an 2/3 iron 1/3 nickel alloy so double the Ni containt of stainless Steel just leaking Chrome you can imagine the basically non existing oxide layer
And the second is/are stainless steel bolds and nuts they cann weld together after tighting the stainless prevents oxides from forming and the pressure with the movement against each other ripping up the old oxid layer and making them fiz
Whoa... that triangular phase-space diagram was eye-opening. There's _so much room_ to explore in the middle of that! Who knows what kind of superconductivity or other weird properties we might unlock, especially with very finely controlled deposition like what Alpha Phoenix did for his Ph.D.
Imagine the crazy materials we could make if we could choose exactly what atoms went on every space on the cube
Not to mention programmable alloy volumes.
The idea of hard ductile materials has officially broken my brain, I don't know if I'll ever be able to think again
Guess thinking about it like a spring is mayby a solution... It's hard steel but can spring
@@africanelectron751 mayby
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Good luck. 👍
I’ve now worked on a couple projects involving this field. Something I found interesting is how different research groups define HEAs. I worked with a HEA that had the presence of an intermetallic which some definitions of HEA do not define as a HEA (not solid solution). Another alloy only had three of the five Cantor alloy elements in equal concentrations, making it a medium entropy alloy (Smix5 elements. I found all three of these alloys fascinating, and all had very unique properties not found in conventional alloys. Complex concentrated alloys (CCAs) can be used to describe all three of those (as all HEAs are CCAs), but it has much less of a ring. Many pioneers in the field stick to the strict definition of HEAs, but I find does not ring as well to people outside the field. So I somewhat incorrectly refer to all as HEAs
Ah neat! I didn't realize there was such a range of interpretation about how these are defined. I did see a few alternate naming schemes (multiple-component alloy and the like) but didn't realize it was more than just a naming thing. Very cool, thanks for sharing the extra details!
I've never played with depositing on glass, but when depositing on Gallium Nitride (Or AlGaAs) I remember an adhesion layer of titanium or nickel was always used. Even without annealing, I think those were just kinda stickier first layers. In this case do you really want the alloy to remain stuck during the process or not? - I know almost nothing about high entropy alloys and this is way cool.
I love the idea of using the laser to create extremely small melt and quench areas. Not sure what your sputtering setup looks like so this ranges from "impossible" to "really annoying", but I'm curious if you tried a very coarse digital alloying where you'd lay down repeated thinner layers 123123123 rather than 111222333. of course it looked like your laser was pretty effectively melting all of it at once, so maybe this would make no difference at all, but I figured it was worth a question! if most of the blobs you found adhered were in mechanically adjacent layers, maybe that might tell.
Cool stuff!
♥ Hi hi! I was sorta hoping you had a bunch of crystal and metallurgy corrections that I could pin to the video 😂
Yeah not sure about the adhesion issue, if it would be desirable for the film to stick better or not. Or if it would even matter... the laser process is pretty aggressive and might do the same everytime regardless. Dunno! Probably the right thing to do is to blap it all off the slide into solution, then repeatedly irradiate the solution itself (focal point in the middle of the vial) to re-process the flakes and particles.
The "igital alloying idea is definitely doable although falls in "really annoying" category :) I've been looking into it because I want to play with nanolaminates of alternating layers. You can define sputter sequences to run automatically and the machine seems to use a simple XML file to define those sequences, so I think I can create a long sequence and import it to run. The major issue is that it only has two sputter heads, so if I wanted 121212 it's easy but 123123 would require cycling the chamber and waiting for it to pump back down (solid hour or two for the oxidation-sensitive metals).
(I'm working on a pulsed laser deposition setup with the new vac chamber, might be easier with that system. Not as nice of layers, but easier to deposit many different materials at once)
But on that note, would it be possible to anneal thin layers into an alloy? Say deposit alternating layers that are only 1-2nm thick, stack up 50-100nm of layers and then anneal it all together. Would the metal have enough mobility at temperature to reconfigure into a crystal, or is that just a recipe for everyone separating out into distinct phases?
Dave H
I was going to say that adhesion to glass will be better if the first layer is Cr or Ti. The layer can be very thin. I don't know how well Ni would work.
I mean, your "almost nothing" is probably considerably more than the majority of the comments on here tryharding to sound knowledgeable. xD
Also, I love how I can hear your voice in your writing.
@@BreakingTaps Have you tried to use laser deposition to deposit all five elements at once? It seems like that would make a High Entropy metal alloy layer.
@@BreakingTaps "would it be possible to anneal thin layers into an alloy?" It's something smiths have to watch out for when making a pattern welded (damascus) billet. Too many folds & too much heat gives you an ugly mottled alloy blade instead of a beautiful weld pattern.
The cooling rate is crucial in forming phases in these alloys, and I think that the way you produced those "HEAs" contributed to the unsuccessful attempt. Rapid cooling rates are not favourable for creating solid solutions. As you mentioned, arc melting is a better way, or induction melting is also a great way of making small lab-scale melts. Also, you picked very different metals that do not like to form a homogeneous solid solution. The FeNiCuAlZr alloy has a
rapid cooling should produce good glass with very high entropy; why do you think otherwise?
@@janami-dharmam High entropy alloys have crystalline structures, typically BCC or FCC or the mixture of these. The thing that you are talking about is metallic glasses (or amorphous alloys). They do not have a periodic crystal structure. Metallic glasses and HEAs are two different things, however, sometimes people refer to MGs as the predecessors of HEAs.
Soon as I saw your shop, instant sub, you're not just some person reading off studyings and tainting them with random opinions, you obviously practice something with metallurgy or material science. Very cool
This is literally magic. If you tried to tell someone about this a few years ago, they'd be dumbfounded.
Allegedly, in Dungeons and Dragons, Adamantine is made by mixing a ferrous ore called adamant with electrum and silver in significant proportions with each other. So, iron, whatever other element adamant contains, silver, and gold in relatively equal amounts? Sounds like a HEA to me. It’s even canonically got an extremely high melting point and is considered extremely easy to mess up when making, which tracks with what I’ve read about the processes of making various other HEAs.
I am definitely going to add this concept to a fantasy setting I’m world building. This is absolutely something that would appear to magical but is actually something scientific.
Seems similar to metallic glass (amorphous metal). Look into how they are manufactured. They are quickly chilled before the alloy has a chance to separate and recrystallize. Interesting video on metallic glass was posted by Tim on the Grand Illusions channel. Video is titled "Atomic Trampoline".
Funny you mention this...in the early 2010s when bulk metallic glass research started to fizzle out (outside of magnetics) a lot of metallic glass researchers shuffled over into HEA research.
Haha, yeah, the descriptions here about HEA's (or whatever we're calling them) reminded me of some of the interest we had around amorphous metals. One of my colleagues was looking at a family of alloys when I finished my M.S. in 2008. Wonder what came of it. I know corrosion resistance (crack propagation) was a big motivation.
neat! having grown up around a foundry and working as a mechanical engineer, its not every day i learn something 100% new about metallurgy. thanks!
I have to say, as a materials science student, I absolutely love your content. You are able to communicate these complex phenomena clearly and in a way that makes sense to people who haven't taken years of classes on the subject. Thank you for this quality content and keep up the good work!
Foundry metallurgist here...great video! As much as I'm familiar with this class of materials (not much, to be honest), everything sounded about right. I'll add that there are at least some casting alloys, mostly specialty stainless steel alloys in my experience, that are ternary and have significant amounts of the major constituent elements:
-Heat-resistant stainless steel. Although this is generally a broad class of materials, composition-wise, the more highly-alloyed grades have 15-30% Cr, 15-50% Ni, and 20-60% Fe. The balance of Cr and Ni, in particular, can be used to tailor the material to oxidizing or reducing environments, improve resistance to sulfide and/or chloride corrosion, adjust the maximum service temperature, and adjust the microstructure to improve cracking resistance under cyclic loads. Carbon is an important feature of pretty much all of these, as chromium carbides help improve high-temperature strength, creep resistance, and fatigue properties.
-Extreme heat-resistant alloys. These are an offshoot of the standard heat-resistant grades that keep the high levels of Cr, Ni, and Fe and then add usually Co, W, and Nb in concentrations of 5-15%.
-There are plenty of alloys like the manganese austenitic stainless steels and high-chromium white cast irons that have excellent wear resistance and decent corrosion resistance, but needing high levels of both of those things end up in the realm of certain specialty alloys. 30+% Ni, 30% Cr, a smorgasbord of other elements like Mn and Cu in the 1-5% range, and 5-20% Fe forms helpful intermetallic compounds that boost wear resistance while still having excellent corrosion resistance thanks to the nickel and chrome.
I wonder if we can finally achieve superconductivity without those subzero temperatures being a prerequisite. That would open up a whole new dimension of possibilities! One thing comes to mind is magnetic levitation devices, true hoverboards!
We've had real floating (through magnetic repulsion+attraction that quantum locks it in place just like superconductors but stabilized in a different manner than the effect that locks superconductors to magnets) hoverboards for almost a decade now.
They'll always require a ferromagnetic material to stand on, (or an impossibly diamagnetic material which can't physically exist afaik) so it's as real as it gets already
This whole field is fascinating to me, and I'm 47 and this is the first time I've seen or learned any of this before. how cool -- thank you content creator and thank youtube for recommending it
As someone who tig welds 5052 aluminum , I have always wondered about the process of making it 6061 vs 5052. This helped me understand it a lot better, thank you!
The “Here be dragons” part on your triangular phase graph is such a good science communication example!!! Keep up the good content
Very interesting, and thank you for posting the HEA lectures because now I sure want to learn more about it!
I use DFT to calculate thermodynamic and elastic properties of HEAs. This is pretty neat. Great video.
12:28 on that note, is it possible to intentionally use alloyed sputtering targets to pre-mix the metals? Maybe that will increase the entropy in the final product
I was wondering this too. Would it be possible to have multiple sputtering heads in a large chamber pointing in the same direction so you get mixing in the plasma phase?
Yep! But with a caveat. Metals sputter at different rates, even if they are alloyed together. So the mixture that lands on the substrate is often different than the mixture in the sputtering target. But otherwise it's definitely possible. Can also mix "in the chamber" as @seeigecannon suggested, or do things like introduce process gasses to react with the plasma in-flight (typically used to make oxides).
@@BreakingTaps Could you also magnetically trap the particles and stir them together before depositing them? I'm thinking of inductive levitating metals, where you have two opposing yoke coils made up of a single wire, preferably insulated, and one could pulse it to "trap" and then dump the mixture onto the surface.
@@BreakingTaps Could you make your own sputter target with five different segments? You could size them inversely to their sputtering rate.
Suggestions: Do it twice. Ball mill your results from the first pass, and then laser the powder.
Your layers are acting as separators, so you'll need to homogenize the substrate a bit.
Perhaps codeposition is a better route. Multiple boats, or a heterogeneous target for sputtering?
Super fascinating stuff. I love all the interesting fields and topics you bring to our attention.
Also... a high energy ball mill sounds like it would be one of the most deafening pieces of equipment imaginable. haha
Haha yeah, I bet they make quite a racket!
Can confirm, we wear plugs and muffs while running ours.
0:27 I saw the full video of the restoration of that exact watch on the picture. I cannot believe I just found yet another screenshot taken from that very specific video inside another unrelated video for a third time this week. This is wak!
Dude you deserve so much more subs. Awesome work, keep it up !
Spread the word, that's how we can help as this is very helpful to many. Totally agree : )
I love how much fun you have exploring these ideas and sharing the results with us. I equally love going to your comments and watching Cunningham's law in action. I learn so much from both. Keep the videos coming!
It makes sense the tungsten didn't work, considering its melting point. Also, it would have been nice if you had talked a bit about the exceptions to the intermetallics thing, like invar, or some brasses and bronzes.
Yeah that was a bit of a miss on my part. I had originally wanted to talk about those and binary eutectics like Pb-Sn (or even how most stainless alloys are a bit different since some of the components are interstitial)... but I forgot 😅 Perhaps in a future video! And tbh, I have some more reading to do on my side, some of these concepts are still fuzzy to me and not sure I could explain them coherently yet!
@@BreakingTaps I didn't even think about stainless, 18-8 is less than 75% iron. Also, I've read the word plenty, but I still don't really understand what a eutectic mix is. I know it applies to more than just metals.
Your discovery of the difficulty of getting the Tungsten to combine, with the hypothesis that it's because it's a refractory metal, gives me an idea.
Take [ whatever data that represents how much of that wavelength of laser energy is captured and turned to heat] for each metal. Then lay down the metals in order of their [ laser energy required to boil ], so that the most energy demanding materials are the first ones in the line of fire. Then, when you hit them with the laser, the low-melting/high-absorption layers don't get over-energized before the more difficult layers are fully zapped.
It may also be worth finding some sort of deliberate "stop" layer, that will keep the stack in place longer before separating from the glass, or react away the oxygen that may dislodge from the surface.
EDX at home and dual target magnetron sputtering ! That's a dream !
Keep going in that direction, and keep feeding me with very very interesting and out of the box ideas !
Maybe try to start from a liquid solution of various metal precursors and apply an atmospheric plasma on it to reduce everything at the same time.
The way you should approach this is to use something like cymatics on the substrate while you are sputtering, along with much thinner layers. The goal would be to alter the probability densities of the ions in target areas.
I just dropped out of community college because the DEA has intentionally mismanaged the adderall supply.
The instant you brought up intermetallic compounds i just know how terrible they are. From a jewelry standpoint it can be the death of a mix which i made a lot of mistakes with. I've accidentally made intermetallics while trying to save money for certain alloys which ended up being more work than just using the expensive version. Definitely not fun at such a scale where you want the metal to stay ductile instead of being so brittle it breaks apart when you look at it
I work in a production job and there IS a process we use. And having been iq tested several times and knowing where i stand amongst people percentile-wise, i was given a laugh at your comment about your frustrations. Not one of derision at all. But i watch people all day try to performatively bypass the process (which isnt perfect by the way but is established and was done so by lots of people who are fairly switched on and have been focused on the primary priorities) to serve one part of a complex goal or their own fancy. I had a unit come to me today for testing. I had rejected it yesterday to repair for a non conformity. The response of the repair person was a repair on a different nonconformity. I already knew what they had fudged but tested it anyway out of curiosity. The repair guy on my shift comes over and does the equivalent of thumbing the scale to pass it. This is on my name. So i let him. It passed.
At which point he buzzed off amd i retested it checking the original noncom and the part of the scale he thumbed. As it happens it still passed.
And it truly passed. Theres only so many ways to fake my guage or externally fool it. I wansnt doing them and since they dont require the more definitive test either on the client side or the provider side, it passed. Theres no established way for me to test this, even though that's the end customer use case.
But, it would have been faster just to change the noncom part. And it would have better served quality to send the whole unit back to reprocess. But it passed.
All that being said i like the way you think because you at least understand that it would have been better to do what you ougtta. And THAT being said, dont quit that trying to work around bit. It is how better methods are made.
As long as its tempered by ethics.
@@metamorphicorder May you find Jesus
@@metamorphicorder well your high iq ... i presume high but lol, may want to edit your grammer before posting... just saying if your going to exclaim your brilliance perhaps an edit is in order. Lmfao
@@metamorphicorder To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand intermetallics.
And yes, by the way, i DO have a high entropy alloy tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid 😎
@@Jefferson-ly5qe what the actual fuck are you talking about?
Thought I was getting click bait popscience, got an extension of my physics degree. Thank you very much you’ve gained a subscriber
You might consider changing the precursor target to have many smaller layer stacks to begin with, so that when you ablate, you are much more mixed to begin with.
Also, if film adhesion to the target is troublesome, you could try to start with a layer that does adhere well as a buffer layer. I had to do this with some heterostructures we made that needed AlOx, and Au. I've been told by my PI that a Ti buffer layer (or Cr) is good at getting Au to adhere to Si, so maybe it'd help with the Cu layer as well.
Last, I can imagine that with 5+ or more elements all in similar proportions, the phase space is massive, and creating the same thing twice could be hard with this method depending on your level of control over deposition rates.
When I was in the military, I was sitting in on a production meeting & I remembered the Lockheed rep mention something about “unique atomic geometry alloys” or “UAGA’s”, since that day I have not been able to find any literature on this terminology either in industry or in academia. This leads me to believe it’s some sort of proprietary product(s) of theirs. Ofcourse this was during the time when the F-35 fifth Gen fighter was coming online. It’s pretty rare to hear corporate figureheads mention such things with such specificity when discussing big picture outlooks but, I specifically remember that terminology because it stuck out from the overall topic of discussion.
Have they tried loading that stuff into a gun and shooting it? Or maybe get a mantis shrimp to punch it. These aren't entirely serious suggestions but I also wouldn't be completely surprised if they worked.
Haha yunno I haven't seen it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised either. 😂
Yes, there have been ballistic tests on a number of HEAs. They usually behave like a (very expensive) stainless steel.
I love the idea of an industrial process that includes a tank of mantis shrimp busily punching the materials.
I'm a sociology guy so a lot of this went over my head but material science and metallurgy is one of my favorite topics as a hobby. I love learning about what we can do and how we get there
Should we expect the same metals to be good for high entropy alloys as are used in normal metallurgy? Or might idk tantalum, antimony, samarium, strontium and scandium turn out to work really well together?
As far as I can tell, it's wide open across most metals and some non-metals! I.e. here's a paper that made DyErGdHoLuScTbY (aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5051514). There are quite a few variants out there using refractory metals too, like WNbMoTaV. If I understand correctly, the refractory metals are under a lot of active research right now because they can retain their material properties at very high temperatures, so lots of commercial interest there.
Great idea. I'd be interested to see what some hafnium would produce.
@@WmSrite-pi8ck There are quite a few Hf containing alloys in this space - TiNbHfZr for instance.
...or if not, season lightly with Lanthanides.. ;)
Weird how those alloy blobs looks like high speed photographs of a nuke detonation
I appreciated the spicy flashlight.
I need to get my head out of the internet.
The most incredible and amazing video about material science that I have seen ever. Thank for share with us
Please continue uploading videos like this!
Just wondering, could performing metal film deposition using multiple metals at once in a single chamber achieve something similar to laser ablation? It seems like it could reduce the process to a single step. Would the particles be too large?
@AlphaPhoenix
Not sure if I can even tag other people in a discussion on YT. But he does molecular beam epitaxy IIRC, which would be the way to go for mixing stuff on the atomic level
I was wondering the same.
Wow. I did a lot of chemistry and physics and even mechanics, at school, but for some reason I never was interested in metals, or curious about them. They were just THERE, you know? I made some ski sharpening tools from 6063 Aluminium (with an I, please!) and spent some time at the milling machine.
And now, after 57 years of life, you go and trigger a desperate need in me to learn more about metals, with just one video. Thank you so much, I think! As long as I don't get consumed by this, it's all good. :)
Fascinating ! as always, do you have some new equipment in the lab that you haven't shown ? I don't think I've seen the sputter coater shown at the beginning, pretty good results I think for first try please keep up this great work...cheers.
I'm impressed. My best alloying tech was making an oxygen deprived atmoshere, in my propane forge.
This is fascinating, I wasn't aware of this type of alloy. Thanks!
Were you ever in academia doing funded research? Your level of familiarity with the literature on a variety of materials science and optical topics is consistently exceptionally high.
Thanks! Just on the molecular bio side of things, so not very helpful to the content of the channel. Otherwise just a lot of skimming review articles and watching lectures to get up to speed. All very shallow knowledge though. Mile wide, inch deep sort of thing 😄
i accidently was talking about this topic a few times recebtly without knowing any proper terms or research and now thanks to this video i can go learn more. Why we focus so much on minor changes that feel safely close to the hydrogen model and fail to play with considering how materials can cascade properties as it is forced to sort itself out. I know my intuition is much more geared for this kind of chemistry!
The effect of Chromium on this process does make a lot of sense due to just how good it is at giving and receiving electrons since it occurs in nature with 4 stable isotopes. It allows it to kind of ghost its way into the crystalline structure just by gaining or losing some electrons. I wonder how Tin, an element with 10 stable isotopes, would contribute to a mix like this.
Please enlighten me, what do isotopes have to do with giving and receiving electrons?
@@baranzenovich It's more that the element atoms have more possible configurations that are stable, which tends to make the element more flexible in terms of giving and receiving electrons from their shell.
An isotope of an element has interesting properties, stable isotopes even moreso since they don't experience radioactive decay. An isotope with fewer neutrons has a stronger positive charge, meaning that the electron shell around the atom is more likely to attract any free radicals into its sphere of influence. An isotope with more neutrons has a weaker positive charge which will cause the shell to more willingly cast off electrons to reach stability.
In metallurgy, with the formation of crystalline structures as the mixture cools, you'll find that these varied energy states allow the element to more easily 'slot' into place forming a stable alloy instead of beading up and separating. There is a reason why the first alloy that humanity ever mastered was made using copper (a transition metal) as the base and tin (an element with so many stable configurations that it's actually funny). It was an alloy that was ridiculously easy to get right.
@@shadowtheimpure isotopes of an element have fewer / more neutrons, which dont contribute to the positive charge, but the same number of protons, which DO contribute to charge - so i dont think isotopes have a big influence on behaviour in alloys
@@raiyiar doesnt seem outside of the realm of possibility - heavier isotopes of the same element will have greater bond enthalpies due to a lower ZPE. Unsure on the impact of alloys, but in organic chemistry deuterated compounds are incredibly useful for probing reactions for this very reason.
@@benwhitehair5291 well yea, hydrogen has an atomic mass of 1, and deuterium has an atomic mass of 2, so deuterated substances can have sliiightly different behaviour (but i dont think to the extent, that Y-H bonds would be possible in one situation, and Y-D bonds at the same position are impossible) - contrast that with tin, with an atomic mass of around 120 - even if an atom had 10 more neutrons, that would change the atomic mass by less than 10%, which is not nearly as drastic as the doubling with deuterium (or tripling with tritium)
I'm studying material engeneering and material science and just found out this channel. I think i will stay longer with this holy grail
incredible video
(fwiw, Cr-added nodule shape is not octahedral. appears to be a dodecahedron)
Whoops! You're right :)
To get more coverage in your analysis of particles: use some computer vision algo to segment out particles -> make features for each particle -> use unsupervised clustering algo to segregate similar particles into a cluster
Could you layer your sample multiple times then use that as the source to sputter a new slide such that the single atoms are mixed through sputtering and more evenly distributed onto the sample? Maybe have to do a grid checkerboard for the source vs. Plane layers.
Hmm, potentially! With a caveat: metals will sputter at different rates (i.e. silver sputters a lot faster than nickel), so you'd have to do some work to make sure the target sputtered the quantities you wanted. I think something like a checkerboard would work best, otherwise it'll just "eat" through the layers one-by-one and you'll end up with layers on the sample. But in principle something like a checkerboard could work! That's a neat idea, I might see about trying that...
@@BreakingTaps Perhaps the different sputtering rates could be counteracted a bit by strategic layering of the initial layers. So for example if silver sputters faster than nickel then you put silver as the lower layer. Then again I'm not 100% sure of the exact sputtering method.
Coming from someone who has no idea why they're watching this video; this is fascinating, and I'm subscribing.
Good work, man.
You taught me some stuff. Some of it, I can even use.
Check your laser, man.
If you want smaller sizes, maybe try small taps, with the laser.
Control your local energy gradient.
It may be, also, that you've gotta decrease your ambient temperature.
Obviously, you should try these ideas, in reverse, too.
Maybe you're too cold, or maybe you're too hot, but if you can control your laser output, then control your laser output. Control it, all over the map, until you learn something. lol
Intriguing. Thanks.
You just gained so much respect for humbling yourself.. the dog on the computer.. lol love him/her/it ❤️
Metals, alloys are 100% my favorite subject. Endless possibilities. Set up a vacuum chamber, or even just TIG puddle. Couple at a time adding one by one from there.. idk lol 😆
love how you can do such cutting edge stuff in your garage...
love your vids
also, what if you make nanoparticle solutions of each metal separately, and then combine the solutions afterward, mix thoroughly, and then boil of solvent and sinter/arc furnace it?
I suspect that could work! Would be hard to generate a lot of material, this laser process struggles to make even micrograms of material. But if you had enough of the individual nanoparticles you could probably mix them together either with the laser itself, or with something like an arc furnace.
I have found a way to cut Granite using Aluminum due to the unusual properties materials have while under the influence of ultrasonic Vibrations. The strength of the materials changes similar to how its easy to break a pencil but gets harder and harder to do as you get increasingly shorter. With proper technique and tuning I have yet to find a material which it is incapable of scratching. More important than what the target surface is make of it is state of polish. The more polished the surface the higher the frequency needed and more precise the tuning required. Its crazy to be honest and I hope to be able to develop some sensors to make more quantitative sense of the effects I am witnessing. If I had your skills it would be a cake walk :D
I am curious if some of your Allows would express unusual properties if they are under the influence of ultrasound also as they should either solidify with bonds which under normal circumstances would be energetically unfavorable or more importantly in my opinion for half of the wave the particle will essentially be in zero gravity as it would be falling with that of the Earth with the other half of the sin wave providing the energy to get it up there. Obviously it would all happen very fast but it might help to ultrasound these samples as they are still liquid.
Super interesting stuff, I've seen a lot of comments about using different deposition methods for assembling your starting material and it made me immediately thing of AlphaPheonix and his PhD work. The way he described the machine they used for growing metallic crystals was like a giant spray painting machine that painted with different elements.
Link to the video explaining it - th-cam.com/video/bnqQyeqGIBE/w-d-xo.html
Seems like it could be one way to get a much more intimately mixed starting material if that is found to be important for the process. Cheers for the really neat video on a subject I hadn't heard about before!
I don't know much about these processes but the idea of sputtering all of them at the the same time popped into my head. Maybe even by depositing them, breaking up the product, turning it into the raw stock, using that for more sputtering and then repeating this process till they are all homogeneous
Its truly amazing how far we've come with metamaterials.
have no idea what’s goin on but these are the videos I look for. Thank you for sharing this with us.
This feels like something i would have dreamed up as a kid in highschool. "What if we took all the metals and mixed them together to get a super metal!" *and it works*
I can already predict the next step after this, which are LOW entropy alloys, where each atom has a predetermined location, giving it the desired properties at any given position in the material.
Increíble video. Thank you for introducing me to entropy alloys. Very educational. Thanks for being here.
Man I can't get enough of your videos
Super-critical helium as liquid mediator to more swiftly cool? Awesome exploration you've shared with us!
The “here be dragons” analogy for the phase diagram really made me laugh, that was good.
Material science is so fascinating!
It's literally the foundation for ALL of technology.
Amazing video. You are doing some awesome stuff. You could call this the "new alchemy". Keep up the good work and keep trying.
It's like oil and water, you can't randomly drop and expect they fuse all together by a chance. On the other side if you can see even distribution, but different proportions, you can detect what combination in % give you the best fusion without leftovers.
Suggestion:
Melt your alloy materials together in a crucible that's inside the stator of an induction motor so you can use the rotating magnetic field to thoroughly mix the metals together.
If you want to get fancy, use the stator from a delta-wound 3-ohase motor and a programmable 3-phase power supply that lets you adjust voltage, current, and frequency so you can tweak the rotation speed and intensity of the mixing effect.
A surround sound card fed into a trio of audio amps connected to the phase windings would probably work for cheap and let you try a variety of mixing strategies to see what works best. Like maybe mixing some high frequencies in with the fundamental rotation frequency for extra agitation...
If your issue is thermal (quick quenching), you could try mounting your setup on a peltier plate for cooling. May also require a vacuum to get temps really low. Not sure how the laser would interact, but I think having lower temps would help for larger particle sizes.
I used to know a guy who was doing a PhD into using high entropy alloys in high radiation environments, like nuclear reactors and especially fusion reactors where materials are going to be exposed to a high neutron flux. Theory being that knocking an atom out of position in a high entropy alloy is going to cause a lot less problems than in a standard material because the relative change in environment is so much smaller. Definitely interesting stuff
This is pretty common for HEAs. Many of them will form two distinct phases, whether that's FCC+FCC, BCC+BCC, HCP+HCP, or some combination thereof. In fact, there is a subset of HEAs called "Eutectic" High Entropy Alloys, which are a eutectic mixture of two phases in a high entropy alloy.
Ahhh, there is nothing to love more than a Breaking Taps video!
Interesting how listening to this made think of forming 3D printer style "spool wires" of the HEAs at controlled thicknesses as an intended manufacturing medium for creating some production consistency to these materials. Which then potentially, dovetailing, leads straight into utilizing the 3D printer concept for applying the new materials typing.
Sputter metal alongside a laser, just like a laserprinter does, this would fuse the metal on a surface. Now do this with several metals, each their own laser. Have the lasers come together at the same spot, to fuse the sputtered metals. Maybe this would be the new laser sintering, building metal shapes and creating alloys on the fly.
We’re doing experiments with a University where a mix of elemental powders are being applied using a LENS machine. That mixes the elements as they are being deposited and “welded” to the surface of a forge tool. Seems to provide improved wear characteristics to the tool but whether the result is cost effective is yet to be determined.
the cheap way to find something you want probably will be in junkyard pod metal crucible? they melt everything together everyday in large quantity. there are always some metal beans leftover in the bottom of the crucible. sometimes it is as hard as a coffin nail, and some times it has other properties such as high temperature. and it is free to acquire these slag for sample if you know the owner.
4:17 huh that sounds like a really good material for making swords. Lol imagine if there was a high entropy alloy as hard as sapphire but as ductile as steel
I would think that mixing purified metal powders together, flooding them with a noble gas, and then blasting them with an electrical arc until thoroughly molten would be the most practical way to make a macroscopic sample of a high-entropy alloy.
But that would be so costly... i think there is lots of ideas like these
But none of them actually being worked on because they are just economically not feasible
Life is only interesting when you’re at the edge of your knowledge 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 this is where I come alive
Like the novel approach, perhaps try Niobium instead of tungsten, if your set on using 1 refractory metal, it plays much nicer with cu + ni + au + ti, check out the nb-ti phase to see what I mean. Works with platinum to a point also, not sure about Fe, zr, cr. Tungsten hates everything. Niobium or Tantalum preferred for welding compound joints in my line if work.
Have you tried making Nitinol ? You have the equpment to do it and I think it would make a grate video. It would be a good addition to this video.
"High entropy metals"
"there's too much data"
Hm, whoda thought
BTW when I was working in a related industry we started off by plasma etching the surface of the material before adding metal, specifically to get better adhesion during physical vapor deposition.
Aha, that's a good tip! Will try that next time
Instead of a liquid to suspend and cool the metal elements, what would occur if you ran the laser over the plate in a supercooled environment (somewhere close to absolute zero) I would think this would cause them to all cool at once creating a uniformly mixed alloy. I’m no expert, just wondering.
wow. I would definitely want to try the in-solution method. you could use inkjet technology to 3d print a structure out of metal salt solution, which presumably is perfectly mixed, and have an evaporation/sintering laser following the liquid. Might take a while to make anything big though
edit: Or, maybe dissolve all the metals in mercury, then flash off the mercury. Or what about some sort of gel with a high concentration of metal salts; could be perhaps cast and then baked to make like a metal aerogel?
A suggestion. Coat 2 materials on each other and peal of using laser. Harvest the resulting particles. On a new glass coat the harvested material and add the extra metal. Laser sinter and harvest again. With this method you add one material at a time. Hope it works. 🤞
This is such a cool channel. I need to binge your videos
Have you heard of computed axial lithography? It's a method to essentially 3D print something all at once instead of layer by layer. It looks very cool.
Can you elaborate on the element analyzer you use and the associated software? Or maybe you've done a video about it?
Really loved the "here be dragons" part of the diagram. Its always the best part of any technical discussion.
To me, it seems like heat feels like the wrong way to try and get these results. To my amateur eye, the problem with this use of heat is that heat is going to effect material according to particle mass. Basically, there's no great way to heat both A and B, but not mixtures of (A+B). Using pulsed lasers for fast annealing does mitigate this issue, but ultimately the application method keeps the mixture's response to heat "between" A's and B's response. Instead, I would aim for some kind of resonance, frequency-based heating method. I think in that case it would be possible to preferentially heat A and B over A+B, for example using something like Induction Smelting, Microwave Resonance, something along those lines. Its well known that atomic iron (eg hemoglobin) isn't magnetic, but iron domains are. Using some distinguishing feature like this, it should be possible to basically only heat the iron in a material that's in bulk form, while not heating already-mixed iron, of course depending on what's being mixed in.
The EDS image of the fun octahedral particle makes it look like the Cr is more concentrated to those round surface spots. It be interesting to see if those spots are just surface level chrome oxide formations or if they were actual Chrome that wasn’t soluble in the mixture. That could give you an idea of the mass fraction of elements in the alloy
Agreed! There's also a possibility that it's under the particle. I didn't mention in the video, but at this electron beam accelerating voltage (20keV) the beam can travel a pretty significant distance through the sample. So for smaller particles it's possible the beam shoots through the particle and hits something sitting under it, causing an element to appear in the spectrum.
One of the reasons I was trying to find particles sitting directly on the silicon wafer substrate. In real research they'd use a (S)TEM where this is less of a problem.
@@BreakingTaps 20 KeV is pretty high, what’s the diameter of that particle? How low can you make the accelerating voltage?
Please continue this m doing my project into it seeing it like it helps a lot