Materials Science & Engineering A 800 (2021) 140264

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Materials Science & Engineering A

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/msea

Breakthrough the strength-ductility trade-off in a high-entropy alloy at

room temperature via cold rolling and annealing
Wei Zhang a, Zhichao Ma a, b, c, *, Hongwei Zhao a, d, Luquan Ren b, c
a
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, 130025, China
b
Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun, 130025, China
c
Weihai Institute for Bionics-Jilin University, Weihai, 264400, China
d
Key Laboratory of CNC Equipment Reliability Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun, 130025, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Simultaneous strength–ductility enhancement of a high-entropy alloy via cold rolling and annealing is difficult.
High entropy alloy Cold rolling and annealing were performed on an as-cast Fe35Co21Ni6Cr18Mn20 high entropy alloy (HEA), the
Strength-ductility trade-off microstructure showed single phase face centered cubic (fcc) solid solution without phase transformation and the
Cold rolling
grains were fully recrystallized accompanied by additional grain growth. The grain size decreased significantly
Annealing twins
Tension
from 179.4 ± 15.3 μm to 15.2 ± 1.4 μm. A large number of annealing twins and twin boundaries (TBs) (fraction
up to 44.2%) were observed. The dislocation slip and twinning were observed as the dominant plastic defor­
mation mechanism. Meanwhile, dislocations plugging was also seen near the twin boundaries. Tensile tests
revealed for the first time that the rolling-annealing HEA overcame the strength-ductility trade-off because the
yield strength dramatically increased from 516.7 ± 3.4 MPa to 725.4 ± 4.7 MPa and ductility retained excellent
(from 0.51 ± 0.01 to 0.53 ± 0.01) as compared with as-cast HEA, this behavior was attributed to the grain
refinement and substantial annealing twins including transgranular annealing twins and suspened annealing
twins.

1. Introduction accommodate further plastic deformation [14]. HEAs with heteroge­

High entropy alloys, which are characterized by the alloying of five
or more principal elements have recently drawn much attention for their
high strength, outstanding hardening rates, large fracture toughness and
excellent fatigue resistance [1–3]. These superior properties were
related to the microstructure characteristics including refined micro­
structures, rare intermetallic compounds and rich nanometer pre­
cipitates structure [4,5]. However, recent investigations indicated that
the enhancement in strength is often accompanied by the sacrifice of
tensile ductility and vice versa, which have been major barriers to
overcome the strength-ductility trade-off in HEAs [6–9]. Therefore,
many researchers have attempted to simultaneously improve the
strength and ductility of HEAs via a variety of methods [10–13].
Excellent strength and ductility can be achieved through optimizing
element compositions [14–16]. A. Asabre et al. demonstrated that
incorporation of 3% Al, Ti into as-cast Al0.6CoCrFeNi specimens
increased the strength and the alloys contained moderate Ti exhibited
higher elongation owing to their substantial grain boundaries which
neous structures tend to exhibit outstanding strength-ductility trade-off
[17,18]. Therefore, an additive manufacturing technique has been
proposed to process FeCoNiCrN HEA with hierarchically heterogeneous
structure, which shows good combination of strength (853 MPa) and
elongation (34 %) [17]. In addition, Li et al. have found that metastable
dual-phase Fe50Mn30Cr10Co10 HEA can achieve the strength–ductility
trade-off, resulting from interface hardening and
transformation-induced hardening that were enabled by the reduced
phase stability [19].
Except for above methods to improve mechanical properties of HEAs,
plastic deformation or heat treatment, or indeed both have been
extensively studied [20–23]. Rare reports were found to obtain HEAs
with both high strength and ductility via cold rolling and annealing
despite decades of studies [24,25]. The ultimate elongation of isocratic
CoCrFeMnNi HEA was significantly increased with increasing annealing
temperature and recrystallized volume fraction, whereas the yield
strength and tensile strength is gradually reduced due to the low
strength and low dislocation density and high plastic deformation ability

* Corresponding author. School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, 130025, China.
E-mail addresses: zw199617@163.com (W. Zhang), zcma@jlu.edu.cn (Z. Ma), hwzhao@jlu.edu.cn (H. Zhao), lqren@jlu.edu.cn (L. Ren).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2020.140264
Received 25 June 2020; Received in revised form 28 August 2020; Accepted 8 September 2020
Available online 21 September 2020
0921-5093/© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 W. Zhang et al. Materials Science & Engineering A 800 (2021) 140264

of recrystallized grains [26]. Focus on studying the texture evolution of
cold-rolled Fe34.95Ni27.5Co17.5Al11.5Cr8.5B0.05 HEA at annealing tem­
peratures 1200 ◦ C and 1300 ◦ C, respectively. Experimental results
revealed that the enhanced ductility but inevitably reduced strength of
cold-rolled HEA after annealing at 1300 ◦ C in comparison to 1200 ◦ C,
this behavior was attributed to the weaker grain restraint determined by
larger grain size and stronger texture [27,28]. Our previous study on the
as-cast single-phase fcc Fe24Co23Ni24Cr23Ti2Al4 HEA [29] indicated that
the cold-rolled and annealed HEA present higher strength but slightly
lower ductility due to the new precipitations of bcc phase. Rolling at low
temperature followed by annealing under liquid nitrogen was performed
on Al0.1CoCrFeNi HEA with low stacking fault energy revealed that the
tensile ductility could be further enhanced by increasing the annealing
time but the strength was sacrificed [30]. Joint combination of high
strength and ductility is hard to obtain [31,32]. The nano-lamellar
AlCoCrFeNi2.1 HEA was subjected to cryo-rolling and annealing,
resulting in obvious increase in strength without sacrificing the ductility
[31]. Although the ductility of rolling-annealing HEA was increased as
compared with as-cast HEA, the ultimate elongation (~14%) was still
low to a certain extent.
Fe35Co21Ni6Cr18Mn20 HEA was selected in this study because
Co–Cr–Fe–Mn–Ni system HEA exhibited excellent mechanical properties
including strength and strain hardening capacity, especially at liquid
nitrogen temperature [33-34]. The equi-atomic FeMnNiCoCr exhibited
higher strain hardening levels due to twin interactions, as reported in
recent publications [35-36]. This work examined the microstructures
and mechanical properties on cold rolling-annealing Fe35Co21
Ni6Cr18Mn20 HEA to obtain the HEA with both high strength and
toughness. The results indicated that the combination of fine grain
strengthening induced by the reduced grain size and the twinning
strengthening caused by the interaction between annealing twins and
dislocations improved the strength of HEA, and the plastic deformation
ability of HEA can be enhanced by the presence of twins through acti­
vating the slip system in unfavorable orientations.
intercept method was used to calculate the grain size. Prior to EBSD
analyses, samples were argon-ion polished using Leica EM RES 102 with
cutting rate of 150 μm/h. The microstructure of the tensile-deformed
alloys and the corresponding representative twin orientation relation­
ship was observed with JEOL 2100F transmission electron microscope
(TEM) and selected area electron diffraction pattern (SEAD), respec­
tively. TEM samples were prepared by mechanical polishing followed by
ion milling. Surface scans of energy spectrum were performed in TEM
equipped with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) to obtain the
distribution of elements.
3. Results and discussions
3.1. Microstructures
Fig. 1 presents the XRD patterns and corresponding full width at half
maximum diagrams (FWHMs) of Fe35Co21Ni6Cr18Mn20 HEA in the as-
cast and rolling-annealing condition. The result in Fig. 1a shows that
both the as-cast and rolling-annealing HEAs with only fcc peaks,
revealing that the addition of cold rolling and annealing has not changed
the single-phase fcc structure of as-cast HEA. The lattice parameter was
reduced from 3.588 ± 0.008 nm to 3.571 ± 0.005 nm according to the
XRD results, this phenomenon can be associated with the solid solution
strengthening due to the lattice distortion inside the alloys. After rolling

2. Specimen and methods

Ingots of Fe35Co21Ni6Cr18Mn20 (atomic percent, at%) HEA with a

mixture of pure (>99.9) constituent metals were produced by utilizing
AM-800-3 arc melting furnace under argon atmosphere. The alloy with
an actual composition (at%) of 34.2 Fe; 21.1 Co; 6.3 Ni; 18.7 Cr and 19.7
Mn. In order to ensure chemical homogeneity, the ingots were flipped
and re-melted five times before drop casting into a copper mold to make
a plate measuring 10 mm × 30 mm × 100 mm. The plate was cold-rolled
using AB-DY16A cold rolling mill to reduce the thickness by 45% and the
deformed plate HEAs were annealed at 1000 ◦ C for 2 h. Prior to cold-
rolling, the plate was homogenized in vacuum for 8 h at 1200 ◦ C.
Dog-bone-shaped plates for tensile specimens with nominal gauge di­
mensions 10 × 1 × 1 mm were prepared by slow-feed wire cutting. The
stress-strain relationships of the as-cast and rolling-annealing HEA were
measured at room temperature using self-made tensile tester with an
initial strain rate of 10− 3 s− 1 [37]. Four tensile specimens for each alloy
were measured to ensure the reliability of the experimental results.
Tensile performance was determined following the ASTM E8M − 04
standard.
The crystal structure of the as-cast and rolling-annealing Fe35Co21
Ni6Cr18Mn20 HEA was acquired by utilizing X’Pert PRO MPD X-ray
diffraction (XRD) with a Cu-Kɑ radiation operating at 40 kV and 30 mA.
The sample was scanned through 2θ from 20◦ to 100◦ with a scanning
rate of 2◦ /min. In order to obtain the grain orientation and grain size
distribution of the as-cast and rolling-annealing HEA, electron back­
scatter diffraction (EBSD) measurements were conducted using Zeiss-
Crossbeam XB 1540 focus ion beam (FIB) scanning electron micro­
scope (SEM) with Hikari camera. The accelerating voltage and working
distance were 20 kV and 10 mm, respectively. The HKL Channel 5 Fig. 1. (a) XRD patterns and (b) FWHMs of Fe35Co21Ni6Cr18Mn20 HEA in the
software was utilized to post-process the ESBD data and the linear as-cast and rolling-annealing condition.

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W. Zhang et al. Materials Science & Engineering A 800 (2021) 140264

and annealing, the intensity of the (200) peak decreased while that of
the (220) and (111) peak increased. The intensity of X-ray diffraction on
some specific crystal planes was reduced when grains were broken under
strong stress during rolling, which resulted in weakening relative atomic
planes peaks intensity. Despite the intensities of (220) and (111) peak
were slightly increased owing to the appearance of the textures in spe­
cific direction during plastic deformation, but the intensities were still
low in comparison with (200) peak. It is also demonstrated by IF images
in Fig. 3b, which exhibited no strong recrystallization texture but mul­
tiple textures. Furthermore, the half-peak width of the rolling-annealing
HEA significantly increased compared to as-cast HEA in Fig. 1b, this
behavior was related to the grain refinement.
Fig. 2 a-f illustrates the microstructure evolution of the as-cast and
rolling-annealing Fe35Co21Ni6Cr18Mn20 HEA by EBSD analyses. The as-
cast and rolling-annealing HEA are shown in left and right column,
respectively. Following 45% thickness reduction cold rolling and sub­
sequent annealing at 1000 ◦ C for 2 h, the alloy exhibited microstructures
with full recrystallization and partial grown grains, and annealing twins
(marked by arrows) with two kinds of varying characters were also
frequently observed as shown in Fig. 2b. Transgranular annealing twins
were consisted of coherent twin boundaries on both sides and grain
boundaries on both ends, which could penetrate matrix grain and be
viewed as unbroken annealing twins. Compared to the transgranular
annealing twins, the other kind of annealing twin possessed non-

Fig. 2. (a–b) EBSD-band contrast images of the as-cast and rolling-annealing HEA specimens. (c–d) GB images from the EBSD scan of the as-cast and rolling-
annealing HEA specimens. (e–f) are IPF images of the as-cast and rolling-annealing HEA specimens, respectively. (g) and (h) are the distributions of the grain
size and GB misorientation angle of the rolling-annealing HEA specimens, respectively.

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W. Zhang et al.
Fig. 3. (a) EDS images show homogeneous distributions of Fe, Ni, Cr, Mn, and Co elements in the rolling-annealing HEA. (b) IF images of the as-cast (left) and rolling-
annealing (right) HEA specimens.
coherent twin boundaries that terminated at one end in the grains, thus
calling it suspended annealing twins [38]. One end of the suspended
annealing twins would grow outwards and become transgranular
annealing twins during annealing due to the high energy and instability
of the non-coherent twin boundaries. Fig. 2c and d shows the grain
boundary maps of the as-cast and rolling-annealing specimens, respec­
tively. The blue, green, and black lines are related to high-angle grain
boundaries (HAGBs) with orientation difference greater than 15 ◦ C,
low-angle grain boundaries (LAGBs) with orientation difference ranging
from 2 ◦ C to 15 ◦ C and TBs, respectively [39]. The grain boundary type
of as-cast specimen was dominated by HAGBs with a small number of
LAGBs while a high fraction (approximately 0.442) of TBs appeared in
the rolling-annealing HEA. The TBs cut off the original continuous slip
systems, so that increasing the difficulty of dislocation movement due to
the dislocations need to constantly change the slip system and thereby
increasing the strength of the HEA [40]. In EBSD inverse pole figure
(IPF) images (Fig. 2e and f), similar crystal orientations among adjacent
grains were observed in the as-cast HEA, but noticeable change in the
rolling-annealing HEA was the random orientation of grains, confirming
that no strong recrystallization texture appeared in the specimen subject
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Materials Science & Engineering A 800 (2021) 140264
to rolling and annealing, this behavior was in agreement with pole fig­
ures (PF) as shown in Fig. 3b. A large portion of orientations were
distributed around 60◦ as summarized in Fig. 2h, indicating that a high
density of annealing twins occurred during recrystallization and grain
growth due to twins were formed by rotating 60◦ along the {111} plane
normal in fcc metals [41]. The as-cast specimens with smaller grain size
are more inclined to form annealing twins during annealing, resulting in
the rolling-annealing HEA with a large number of annealing twins in this
study [42]. The annealing twins cut the original grains into smaller
grains, resulting in grain refinement and the grain size were significantly
reduced from 179.4 ± 15.3 μm to 15.2 ± 1.4 μm, the grain size distri­
bution is shown in Fig. 2g. Also, the size and thickness of the twins
increased with the size of the matrix grains, this property has also been
demonstrated in other report [43].
The EDS images (Fig. 3a) obtained from the region marked by red
rectangle in Fig. 2b shows that all elements (Fe, Co, Ni, Cr, Mn) are
uniformly distributed, which demonstrates significant homogeneity of
composition in rolling-annealing HEA. S.J. Sun et al. have suggested that
the strength and hardness can be significantly improved when the
element particles are small and uniformly distributed [41]. The
W. Zhang et al.
development of recrystallization texture in as-cast and rolling-annealing
HEA is shown in Fig. 3b, the IF shows a strong [001] texture in as-cast
HEA, an obvious reduction in intensity and an enhancement in types
of recrystallization texture could be seen when the specimen was rolled
to 45% reduction in thickness and subsequent annealed at 1000 ◦ C for 2
h. The texture components for the cold rolling-annealing sample are
listed in Table 1. The evolution of recrystallization texture was closely
associated with the formation of twins because the presence of twins has
changed the orientation distribution of grains. Based on the above ob­
servations, the reduction in grain size, the uniform distribution of
composition and the formation of a large amount of annealing twins
could all contribute to the improvement of mechanical properties for
rolling-annealing HEA.
To quantitatively analyze the microstructural features of the rolling-
annealing HEA, TEM maps for the rolling-annealing specimens after
tensile tests are shown in Fig. 4. The typical morphology of the rolling-
annealing HEA as shown in Fig. 4a was dominated by the dislocation
entanglement and plane dislocation slip, along with dislocation pile-up
at the grain boundaries and a high density of stacking faults. The
stacking faults could be recognized as an intrinsic characteristic for the
formation of suspended annealing twins [44]. Intensive studies in HEA
have described the solid solution strengthening effect [45], this effect
enables the stacking fault energy of the matrix reduce owing to indi­
vidual alloying element in HEA exists as a solid solution atom in the
matrix, and the stacking fault energy value decreased significantly with
the increasing of the number and type of solute atoms, according to
previous study of Y.D.Wu et al [46]. The Fe35Co21Ni6Cr18Mn20 HEA
exhibits low stacking fault energy due to its variety of solute atoms, and
thereby leads to substantial dislocation plugging groups. Meanwhile, the
poor mobility of dislocations makes cross-slip difficult and therefore
contributes to the existence of large strain energy in the crystal, even­
tually resulting in the formation of annealing twins due to the grain
boundaries migrate in specific direction during annealing [47]. A
random enlarged view of annealing twin as shown in Fig. 4b shows a
suspended annealing twin with non-coherent TB because the TB stepped
at one end. The inset in Fig. 4b is an electron diffraction pattern acquired
in a [011] zone axis, showing the twin orientation relationship. The
presence of non-coherent TB is due to the TB expand not only along the
length but also along the width with increasing the temperature. Also, a
high densities of dislocation entanglements were obtained inside the
twin and dislocations plugging at the TB, suggesting that dislocation slip
was impeded by TBs. Thus, the dislocation motion was becoming more
difficult and then dislocations need to constantly change the slip system,
eventually leading to higher strength. Annealing twins of different
lengths and thicknesses were observed in the TEM as shown in Fig. 4c
and d, indicating that the annealing twins formed at different time. A
high densities of dislocations were also seen inside the annealing twins.
The strength can be enhanced due to a high fraction (approximately
0.442) of TBs despite heterogeneous distribution of twins. In order to
further analyze the deformation mechanisms of rolling-annealing HEA,
a schematic diagram is illustrated in Fig. 5. The twins initiated at a
relative low strain, then the dislocation pile-up and stacking faults were
observed around the grain boundaries. The interactions of twins and
dislocations were activated at a higher strain and dislocations slip was
impeded by twin boundaries, contributing enhanced mechanical prop­
erties of rolling-annealing HEA.
Table 1
The texture components for the cold rolling-annealing sample.
Texture component Euler angles (ϕ1, Φ, ϕ2) Miller indices
Copper (Cu) (90,35,45) {112}<1111>
Brass (Bs) (35,45,0) {110}<112>
Goss (G) (0,45,0) {110}<001>
Goss/Brass (G/B) (74,90,45) {110}<115>
S (59,37,63) {123}<634>
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Materials Science & Engineering A 800 (2021) 140264
3.2. Mechanical properties
Fig. 6 shows tensile properties of as-cast and rolling-annealing HEA
at room temperature. A significant increase in yield strength and ulti­
mate tensile strength always accompanied by inevitably sacrifice in
ductility for HEA in previous studies [26–29]. But in this study, the
engineering stress-strain curves in Fig. 6a demonstrate that not only the
ultimate tensile strength improved from 516.7 ± 3.4 MPa to 725.4 ± 4.7
MPa, but also the tensile elongation increased from 0.51 ± 0.01 to 0.53
± 0.01 after 45% reduction in thickness cold rolling and annealing at
1000 ◦ C or 2 h, and thus contribute to a synergistic combination of high
strength and ductility. Similar methods were also utilized by J.X. Hou
et al. to obtain ultrafine-grained Al0.45CoCrFeNi HEA and achieve the
strength-ductility trade off, the results illustrated that the drastic
enhance in strength was at the expense of ductility with the increasing
temperature [48]. The corresponding strain-hardening rate (dσ/dε,
where σ and ε are true stress and true strain, respectively) versus true
strain curve as shown in Fig. 6b could be classified into three stages I-III.
In the stage I, at true strain less than 0.085, the work hardening rate
reduced sharply achieved by the dynamic recovery of the material [49].
The disappearance of the dislocations gradually accelerated with
increasing the strain at the initial stage of deformation, namely, the
softening was accelerated, resulting in a reduced work hardening rate. In
the stage II, the true strain ranged from 0.085 to 0.1, a temporary in­
crease of the slope was observed, this phenomenon was usually associ­
ated with the formation of additional deformation mechanism such as
deformation twins [50]. It was also mentioned above that the
Fe35Co21Ni6Cr18Mn20 HEA were prone to twinning due to lower stacking
fault energy. In the stage III the true strain is greater than 0.1, the work
hardening rate continuously reduced at a low rate. The excellent
work-hardenability of HEA was owing to the work hardening of the
material is a gradual accumulation process. In addition, the work
hardening rate of the rolling-annealing HEA was higher than as-cast
HEA, which confirmed that the work-hardenability of
rolling-annealing HEA surpassed the as-cast HEA. Abundant dislocations
plugging at grain boundaries cause the reduced capability of storing
further dislocations can account for the outstanding work-hardenability
of rolling-annealing HEA [51].
The mechanical properties of the rolling-annealing HEA, in com­
parison with the as-cast HEA, exhibited superior based on the above
experimental results. The outstanding enhancement in the strength and
work hardening rate could be ascribed to the fine grain strengthening
and twinning strengthening. On the one hand, the resistance of grain
boundaries to plastic deformation improved with the growing area
fraction of grain boundaries induced by grain refinement. In addition,
grain refinement also played a crucial role in improving the ductility.
For example, W.Q. Guo et al. found that the reduced grain size can ac­
count for the improvement in both strength and ductility of a non-
equiatomic HEA due to the formation of finer dislocation cell struc­
tures [52]. On the other hand, substantial annealing twins and twin
boundaries (fraction up to 44.2%) formed during the recrystallization
annealing. The presence of twin boundaries hindered the movement of
dislocations and therefore the slip continued difficultly. The interaction
between twin boundaries and dislocations is one of the predominant
strengthening mechanisms of HEA, this can be demonstrated in Fig. 5.
The elongation of rolling-annealing HEA still increased despite the
as-cast HEA with initial excellent ductility. The formation of twins
changed the orientation of the crystal and turned some slip systems in
unfavorable orientation to favorable position for slippage, thus further
slippage deformation could be induced, eventually leading to a higher
ductility deformation ability of rolling-annealing HEA.
4. Conclusions
The Fe35Co21Ni6Cr18Mn20 HEA has been subjected to cold rolling to
reduce the thickness by 45% and subsequent annealing at 1000 ◦ C for 2
W. Zhang et al. Materials Science & Engineering A 800 (2021) 140264

Fig. 4. (a) shows microstructure image of rolling-annealing HEA after tensile test in TEM. (b) is an enlarged view of a representative annealing twin, the inserted
electron diffraction (SAED) pattern reveals the twin orientation relationship. (c) and (d) are annealing twins with different thicknesses.

Fig. 5. A schematic of deformation mechanisms in rolling-annealing HEA with the increasing strain.

h. The rolling-annealing HEA was characterized by a single fcc solid
solution and exhibited fully recrystallized microstructure accompanied
by a few grown grains. The grain boundary type changed from pre­
dominant HAGBs to a combination of HAGBs and TBs (up to 44.2%). The
types of texture increased notwithstanding the strength of texture
weakened and all alloying elements were evenly distributed without
obvious enrichment. The grain size largely reduced from 179.4 ± 15.3
μm to 15.2 ± 1.4 μm, the refinement enabled an increase in the area
fraction of grain boundaries and then improved the resistance to the
plastic deformation, resulting in a higher strength of rolling-annealing

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W. Zhang et al. Materials Science & Engineering A 800 (2021) 140264

Fig. 6. Mechanical behavior of the as-cast and rolling-annealing HEA specimens. (a) Tension engineering stress-strain curves and (b) strain hardening curves with
respect to true strain, the inserted image is the corresponding true stress-true strain curves.

HEA. Annealing twins including transgranular annealing twins and
suspended annealing twins with different thicknesses formed during the
recrystallization annealing. The formation of annealing twins simulta­
neously benefits strength and ductility of the HEA. On the one hand, the
interaction between twins and dislocations could enhance the strength
and work hardening rate of the material. On the other hand, the pres­
ence of twins could change the crystal orientation to activate further slip
deformation and thereby leads to a higher ductility. The rolling-
annealing HEA showed a substantial enhancement of tensile strength
from 516.7 ± 3.4 MPa to 725.4 ± 4.7 MPa and total elongation after
fracture from 0.51 ± 0.01 to 0.53 ± 0.01, respectively. It is noteworthy
that the ductility of HEA in rolling-annealing condition remained su­
perior. Meanwhile, the work hardening rate of rolling-annealing HEA
was at a higher level as compared to the as-cast HEA. The quantitative
analysis on the microstructure suggested that the fine grain strength­
ening and twinning strengthening were two major contributions for
overcoming the strength-ductility trade-off in the rolling-annealing
HEA.

7
W. Zhang et al.
Data availability
The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot
be shared at this time due to technical limitations.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Wei Zhang: , the rolling and annealing treatments were operated by .
Zhichao Ma: The initial research thought was proposed by . Hongwei
Zhao: and Z.C. Ma, SEM and TEM analysis was carried out by W. Zhang.
Z.C. Ma, . Luquan Ren: and .
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known interests or personal
relations hips that could have appeared to influence the work reported
in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (51875241, U1601203), National Key R&D Program of China
(2018YFF010124, YS2018YFA070002) and Jilin Province Science and
Technology Development Plan (20190302078GX, 20180201126GX).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.msea.2020.140264.
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