Summary
High-performance alloys play a critical role in demanding engineering applications in manufacturing, infrastructure, and transportation (1). In structural applications, they must be strong, ductile, durable, and damage tolerant. However, these characteristics cannot currently be obtained simultaneously (2). Microscale cracks initiated in a tensioned material tend to propagate rapidly and unstably. This process, in turn, can cause catastrophic failure during service or can create strain that becomes highly localized near the crack tip, which makes it difficult to deform the material uniformly during processing. On page 912 of this issue, Shi et al. (3) show that a directionally solidified (DS) eutectic high-entropy alloy (EHEA) develops a hierarchically organized herringbone microstructure that imparts multiscale crack buffering. This material exhibited exceptional damage tolerance over large tensile deformation, as well as ultrahigh uniform elongation.
