Description
Professor Brian Cantor discusses the shift in materials science brought about by the discovery of multicomponent high-entropy alloys, now referred to as Cantor Alloys.
For centuries, alloy development followed a "base-element" paradigm—taking one primary metal (like iron or aluminum) and adding small amounts of other elements to alter properties. Cantor describes how, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he challenged this convention by questioning what happens when five or more elements are mixed in equal or near-equal proportions.
Key themes of the talk include:
The discovery: The history behind the first equiatomic multicomponent alloy (FeCrMnNiCo), which remarkably formed a single-phase solid solution despite the complexity of the mixture.
High entropy effect: How the high configurational entropy of these mixtures can stabilise simple crystal structures (like FCC or BCC) that might otherwise be expected to form brittle intermetallic phases.
Cantor emphasises that the world of multicomponent space is large with combinations yet to be discovered.
There is a potential for these materials to provide unique combinations of properties, that might be appropriate for aerospace, energy storage, and sustainable manufacturing.
About the Speaker
Professor Brian Cantor is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford and a Research Professor at Brunel University. He is credited with inventing the field of high-entropy alloys, and the "Cantor Alloy" remains the prototypical example used in research laboratories worldwide to study this class of materials.