Effect of high-current pulsed electron beam treatment on defect substructure of the high-entropy alloy of Co – Cr – Fe – Mn – Ni system

High-current pulsed electron beam surface treatment is a method of materials modifying, which improves the mechanical properties of metal materials. Due to high-speed heating, evaporation, recrystallization, as well as plastic deformation, dislocations with high density are formed in the surface and, as a result, an increase in indicators of various physical and mechanical properties, such as hardness, wear resistance, etc., is observed. Since currently high-entropy alloys are a relatively new class of materials, the effect of pulsed electron beam treatment on the dislocation substructure has not yet been established. In this work, a non-equiatomic high–entropy alloy of the Co – Cr – Fe – Mn – Ni system, made using a wire-arc additive manufacturing, was subjected to surface treatment using a high-current pulsed electron beam with an energy density 
of 30 J/cm². By the method of studying thin foils using transmission electron microscopy, it was found that the treatment does not affect the chemical composition of the alloy, but leads to serious changes in the dislocation substructure. A nonmonotonic change in the scalar density of dislocations was revealed, reaching a  maximum value of 5.5·1010 cm^–2 at a distance of 25 µm from the irradiation surface. It is shown that an undirected cellular dislocation substructure with cell sizes from 400 nm to 600 nm is formed at this distance from the surface. With further distance from the surface at a distance of up to 45 µm, the dislocation substructure changes from cellular to cellular-mesh. At a distance of 120 – 130 µm, the effect of a high-current pulsed electron beam is not observed – the substructure corresponds to the substructure of the initial alloy with a chaotic distribution of dislocations.

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