Cemented carbides, hardmetals and cermets are conventionally manufactured using mono-carbide or carbonitride hard phases such as WC, TiC or Ti(C, N) although some more complex solid-solution mixed hard phases such as (Ti, Nb, Ta)C may be added or formed in-situ during the sintering step. The commonly used metal binders are often single metal elements like Co or Ni as well as some alloyed mixtures of them, usually with other elements. Within this work, high entropy based hard phases like (Ta, Nb, Ti, V, W)C and high entropy metal binder phases were studied separately as well as together in novel double high entropy based hardmetals. The microstructural, magnetic, and mechanical properties are discussed and are compared to conventional WC-Co based hardmetals. XRD results showed that it is possible to retain the high entropy metal phase as well as the high entropy hard phase after sintering.
Pötschke et al. (Fri,) studied this question.