Is entropy in high-entropy alloys materials science’s flat earth?

I have been publishing articles about high-entropy alloys since 2018, the image I chose to illustrate this post is taken from this first article and I will tell you more about it soon. First, however, I have to tell you how I got involved with the subject.

My first contact with high-entropy alloys was with a presentation by Easo George in the Intermetallics2013 conference. In this presentation George showed that the famous Cantor alloy decomposed precipitating intermetallic compounds if subject to long-term annealing at moderate temperatures.

I must confess I had never heard about high-entropy alloys since then, so I asked a colleague during the coffee break after this presentation (I have no recollection who it was) what was this thing of the high-entropy alloys and this colleague explained to me how the configurational entropy of multicomponent alloys in equimolar compositions would stabilize simple solid solutions. I heard politely the…