EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

High-entropy alloys (HEAs) open up a new horizon for discovering un-explored mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms. Local chemical fluctuations (LCFs) in HEAs were found to have significant influences on their mechanical performance. In this letter, we briefly discuss experimental findings of formation and characterization of LCFs, as well as their effects on the deformation behavior especially of BCC HEAs. We show that existence of LCFs is a common yet key structural feature of HEAs. The observed change of deformation model caused by the LCFs is beneficial for both strengthening and ductilization in typical BCC HEAs. It was found that tuning the degree of LCFs can be an effective way for optimizing mechanical properties of HEAs.