A Mystery of "Sluggish Diffusion" in High-Entropy Alloys: The Truth or a Myth?

Abstract

High entropy alloys (HEAs) are considered as a novel class of materials with a large number of components (five and more) available in equiatomic or nearly equatomic proportions. One of the characteristic properties of HEAs was believed to be so-called 'sluggish' diffusion that should be crucial for intended high-temperature technological applications. The faith on this myth instead of rigorous experimental analysis played such a dominant role that the first set of data on interdi usion, in fact based on an improper analysis, were cited in hundreds of articles to state the presence of sluggishness of di usion rates in high entropy alloys.