Simultaneous enhancement of strength and ductility via microband formation and nanotwinning in an L1₂-strengthened alloy

Metallic alloys with high strength and large ductility are required for extreme structural applications. However, the achievement of ultrahigh strength often results in a substantially decreased ductility. Here, we report a strategy to achieve the strength-ductility synergy by tailoring the alloy composition to control the local stacking fault energy (SFE) of the face-centered-cubic (fcc) matrix in an L1₂-strengthened superlattice alloy. As a proof of concept, based on the thermodynamic calculations, we developed a non-equiatomic CoCrNi₂(Al_0.2Nb_0.2) alloy using phase separation to create a near-equiatomic low SFE disordered CoCrNi medium-entropy alloy matrix with in situ formed high-content coherent Ni₃(Al, Nb)-type ordered nanoprecipitates (∼ 12 nm). The alloy achieves a high tensile strength up to 1.6 GPa and a uniform ductility of 33%. The low SFE of the fcc matrix promotes the formation of nanotwins and parallel microbands during plastic deformation which could remarkably enhance the strain hardening capacity. This work provides a strategy for developing ultrahigh-strength alloys with large uniform ductility.