Bioinspired strategy to break strength-plasticity trade-off in high-entropy alloy

Constructing bioinspired architectures in metallic materials is an effective way to overcome the inherent strength and plasticity trade-off dilemma. However, conventional processing approaches are difficult to finely tailor the microstructures and mechanical properties of bioinspired architectures. Here, using laser remelting technology, we finely and controllably fabricate three sophisticated bioinspired architectures in a high-entropy alloy (HEA). The bioinspired HEA with brick-and-mortar architecture shows an excellent yield strength of ∼520 MPa with a large uniform elongation of ∼35%. Such enhanced strength-plasticity synergy is mainly attributed to the hetero-deformation between the hard and soft regions of bioinspired architectures.