Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980

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Applied Surface Science

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Full Length Article

Rapid fabrication of the continuous AlFeCrCoNi high entropy alloy coating T

on aluminum alloy by resistance seam welding
⁎
Dechao Zhao , Tomiko Yamaguchi, Jinfeng Shu, Tatsuya Tokunaga, Tsubasa Danjo
Department of Materials and Science, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Fukuoka, Japan

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The continuous AlFeCrCoNi high entropy alloy coating was firstly fabricated on aluminium alloy by resistance
Resistance seam welding seam welding. During welding, the coating was formed rapidly under the effect of instantaneous joule heating
High entropy alloy coating and the pressure. The gradient temperature transformed the nanocrystalline AlFeCrCoNi powder into the
Joule heating effect AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating consisted of body-centered-cubic and face-centered cubic structures. According to the
Wear properties
calculation and experimental results, the welding process was not brought the negative affect to the substrate
and only a certain amount of aluminum element penetrated into the coating. The average thickness and hardness
of the coating were 420 µm and 715HV0.2, respectively. Compared to A6061, the coating exhibited excellent
wear-resistance in dry, deionized water and 3.5 wt% NaCl solution conditions. The environment played an
important role in the wear behaviour of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating. Meanwhile, the corrosive wear of the
AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating was proved to be beneficial to reduce the wear rate.

1. Introduction substrate as much as possible.

The excellent physical and mechanical properties such as low den-
sity, high specific strength, good electrical and thermal conductivity
and good corrosion resistance, made the aluminum alloys been widely
used in many fields [1–2]. However, the poor wear resistance of these
materials limits its further application [3]. Surface modification tech-
nology was an effective way to improve the hardness and wear re-
sistance of aluminum alloys. In this respect, surface treatment techni-
ques such as physical vapor deposition (PVD) [4–5], chemical vapor
deposition (CVD) [6–7] and laser surface alloying [8–10] have been
applied to fabricate the wear resistance cladding layers on aluminum
alloys. However, it is very difficult and costly to obtain thick coatings
through PVD and CVD methods. Furthermore, the coatings with several
tens of micro-millimeters are easy to be completely destroyed and
cannot provide the long-term wear protection for aluminum alloys. As
for the laser surface alloying, the thick cladding layer with good wear
resistance could be fabricated through a high energy density heat
source. Since the melting point of aluminum alloy was as low as
~933.5 K, a wide heat affected zone and resultant mechanical prop-
erties degradation on aluminum alloys were inevitably caused by the
high heat generation. Therefore, it is still challenging to prepare high-
performance wear-resistant coatings on the surfaces of the thin plate of
Al/Mg alloys, while at the same time avoiding adverse effects on the
Recently, due to the outstanding properties of the high entropy al-
loys (HEAs), such as good wear/corrosion resistance and abundant
element-constitutions of designing, the research about the high entropy
alloy coatings (HEAc) also developed rapidly [11]. The current main-
stream methods for preparing high-entropy alloy coatings mainly in-
clude the laser/plasma deposition [12–15] and vapor deposition (such
as magnetron sputtering, reactive magnetron-sputtering, and vacuum
arc deposition) [16–19]. However, during the laser/plasma deposition
process, the high standard on the purity and thickness of the preset
powder, as well as the laser power and scanning rate were demanded.
As for the preset powders, the traditional methods were first to press the
powder into bulk and then pre-placed it on the substrate to prepare a
bulk coating [20], which was not continuous and needed to be scanned
back and forth several times. Moreover, other researchers using glue to
form the powder bed on the matrix [21], which was complicated and
not suitable for other higher energy input processes. The most critical
issue was that these methods had a high treatment temperature, which
cannot avoid the adverse effect on the matrix. The magnetron sput-
tering method requires the preparation of a bulk target in accordance
with the coating composition in advance. Therefore, these two types of
methods are time-consuming, require complicated equipment, and
costly in preparation.
Resistance seam welding process (RESW) was a typical welding

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: zhao.dechao696@mail.kyutech.jp (D. Zhao), yamaguchi.tomiko374@mail.kyutech.jp (T. Yamaguchi).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2020.145980
Received 10 January 2020; Received in revised form 16 February 2020; Accepted 4 March 2020
Available online 05 March 2020
0169-4332/ © 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V.
D. Zhao, et al.
Fig. 1. (a) the XRD patterns of the HEA powder and HEA coating and (b) the SEM and TEM results of the HEA powder.
Fig. 2. The DSC curve of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA powder and coating.
method for the joining of thin metal sheets such as aluminum alloys and
magnesium alloys. During welding, the electric current and electrode
pressure were applied on the substrate simultaneously, and the joule
Fig. 3. The EDS elemental mappings of the single AlFeCrCoNi HEA powder.
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Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980
heating effect of the electrical resistivity was the only heat source.
Furthermore, the low electrical resistivity and high thermal con-
ductivity properties of aluminum alloy were also benefited to avoid the
low heat generation of joule heating. Moreover, the conductive powder
itself also generated a joule heating effect when the current was passed
through. If the pressure and current were applied to the powders at the
same time, the coating could be formed theoretically. Therefore, it is
promising to fabricate the high-performance wear resistance coating on
aluminum alloy thin plate by RESW method.
In this study, a typical lightweight HEA (AlFeCrCoNi HEA) with
high strength and good corrosion resistance, was selected as the coating
material. After that, the continuous high-entropy alloy coating was
rapidly fabricated on aluminum alloy by resistance seam welding
method. Moreover, the coating formation ability of the RESW method
was evaluated by the theoretical calculation of the instantaneous tem-
perature and the experimental results. Finally, the wear performance of
HEAc was systematically investigated in dry, deionized water and
3.5 wt% NaCl solution conditions. The wear mechanisms of the coating
in three conditions have also been revealed.
D. Zhao, et al. Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980

Fig. 4. (a) the schematic of fabricating HEA coating by RESW process, (b) the macro-morphology of HEAc on A6061 thin plate, (c) the SEM image of the side surface
of the HEA coating, and (d) the SEM image of the top surface of the HEA coating.

Fig. 5. (a) the principal diagram of RESW, (b) the distribution of the instantaneous temperature between adjacent particles, (c)~(d) the side surface of HEAc.

Table 1 Co were mixed with equal atomic ratios and then added in the plane-
The parameters of the HEA powder for the calculation of the instantaneous tary ball mill (Pulverisette 5/4, Fritzsch) under the argon atmosphere.
temperature. The tungsten carbide grinding ball and tank were used for the milling
Cv (J/(kg·K) ρm (g/cm3) ρ (Ω·cm) Δt (s) r (µm) Is (kA) Ipx (A) process, and the AlFeCrCoNi HEA powder was obtained after 35 h of
the ball milling with a speed of 250 rpm. The specific heat capacity (Cv)
−3
490.84 7.1 3.45 × 10 0.004 10 3.0 0.003 of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA powder was tested by differential scanning
calorimeter (DSC-60Plus, SHIMADZU) and the average resistivity (ρ) of
HEA powder was measured by resistivity meters (Loresta-GX MCP-
2. Materials and methods
T700). The structures of AlFeCrCoNi HEA powder were characterized
by the transmission electron microscopy (TEM, JEM-3000F, JEOL,
2.1. The properties of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA powder
Japan) and X-ray diffraction (XRD, JDX3500, JEOL, Japan).

The high purity (> 95%) elemental powders of Al, Fe, Cr, Ni, and

3
D. Zhao, et al.
Fig. 6. (a) the IPF map of the HEA coating and (b) the phases map of the HEA coating.
Fig. 7. The distribution of the hardness from the HEA coating to the substrate.
2.2. Fabrication and characterization of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating by
RESW
The A6061 plate with a size of 2 × 30 × 150 mm was selected as
the substrate, and the surface was polished by emery paper (#240) to
remove the oxides and cleaned with acetone. After that, the AlFeCrCoNi
HEA powders were pre-placed on the surface of the A6061 alloy sub-
strate with dimensions of 0.5 × 5 × 125 mm. The electrodes had di-
mensions of 65 mm in diameter and 5 mm in width. A 100 µm thickness
SUS 304 foil was placed on the HEA powders to protect the electrodes,
as shown in Fig. 4(a). During welding, the welding current, speed, and
pressure were set as 3.0kA, 0.5 m/min and 2.0 kgf/cm2, respectively.
The properties of the HEA coating were characterized by the scanning
electron microscope (SEM, EMR-8800, Elionix) combined with energy
dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), electron probe micro-analyzer (EPMA,
JXA-8900R) equipped with a wavelength dispersive spectrometer
(WDS), and the electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD, JSM-6701,
JEOL). The thermal properties of the HEA coating were analyzed by a
differential scanning calorimetry (Rigaku Thermo plus Evo DSC 8270,
Japan). Moreover, the hardness of HEA coating was measured using
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Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980
micro-hardness tester (Model MHT-1, MATSUZAWA, Japan) under a
load of 1.96 N and the dwell time of 25 s.
2.3. The wear performance of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating
The tribological properties of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating were
evaluated symmetrically by a ball-on-disc setup (FPR-2000, Japan)
with a different load (4 N, 6 N, and 8 N) in dry, deionized water and
3.5 wt% NaCl solution conditions. Before testing, the HEA coatings
were polished with 1200 grit and cleaned with ethanol. A 5 mm dia-
meter Si3N4 ball was taken as the counterpart and the sliding speed was
2.09 cm/s. The radius of the traveling circle was 10 mm and the re-
ciprocating stroke angle was 90°. All the tests were carried out at room
temperature for 3 h. The coefficient of friction (COF) of samples was
recorded during the wear tests. The wear track area of the coating was
examined with a surface profilometer (VK-X100, KEYENCE, Japan) and
the wear volume V was calculated from the profile of wear scar. The
wear rate (k) of the specimens were calculated as k = V/(FS), where V
was the wear volume loss in mm3, S was the total sliding distance in m
and F was the applied load in N. The chemical compositions of the worn
surface in three conditions were analysed by X-ray photoelectron
spectroscopy (XPS, AXIS-HS).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Mechanical alloying of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA powder
As shown in Fig. 1(b), the spherical AlFeCrCoNi HEA powders with
an average size of 20 µm after ball milling for 35 h was selected as the
raw material. According to the XRD pattern in Fig. 1(a), the half-peak
width (B°) of the HEA powder was 3.34°, which was much larger than
the common phases. After estimated from XRD results, the grain size
and lattice strain of the powder were 2.56 nm and 3.71%, respectively,
which was supposed to be nanocrystalline of HEA. The HRTEM image
of powder in Fig. 1(b) consisted of the extremely small crystalline-like
phase with about 2.9 nm in diameter and the spots in SAED pattern also
corresponded to the nanocrystalline phase, which was in agreement
with the XRD results. The DSC result of the ball-milled AlFeCrCoNi HEA
powder was shown in Fig. 2. With the increase of the temperature, two
D. Zhao, et al. Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980

Fig. 8. The EPMA analysis of the interface between the HEA coating and substrate.

Fig. 9. The EDS elemental mappings of the top surface of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating.

Fig. 10. The friction coefficient curves of the HEA coating and A6061 in three conditions. (a) the dry condition, (b) the deionized water condition and (c) the 3.5 wt%
NaCl solution condition.

obviously exothermic peaks have appeared at 808.6 K and 916.5 K, the final coating will be formed under the effect of the instantaneous
which was also illustrated that the HEA powder belonged to the na- joule heating of powders. Thus, the shape and the distribution of ele-
nocrystalline structure. During welding, the pressure and current will ments in the powder were important for the formation of the HEA
be applied to the powder at the same time, as shown in Fig. 4(a), and coating. According to the EDS elemental mappings of a single HEA

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D. Zhao, et al. Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980

Fig. 11. (a) the friction coefficient rate of the HEA coating and A6061 and (b) the wear rate of the HEA coating and A6061 in three conditions.

Table 2 πr 2
Ipx = Is
The chemical compositions of the worn surface of HEA coating in three con- S (2)
ditions.
where S was the total area of the powder and r was the radius of the
Conditions Elemental compositions (at%)
particle. Therefore, the instantaneous temperature of adjacent particles
O Al Si Cr Fe Co Ni Na can be derived from Eq (3) [24]:

Dry condition 20.99 30.17 3.27 11.42 11.54 11.84 10.75
Deionized water 25.19 14.42 4.9 13.97 13.66 14.11 13.75
3.5 wt%NaCl(aq) 31.41 13.74 7.71 11.34 11.73 11.99 11.73
powder in Fig. 3, the five elements were homogeneously distributed in
the spherical powder.
3.2. Characterization and calculation of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating by
RESW
After welding, the macro-morphology of HEAc was shown in
Fig. 4(b), the continuous HEAc was fabricated at a welding speed of
0.5 m/min for one time and the flat back appearance of A6061 implied
that macroscopic morphology of the substrate was not affected by
welding. The top surface and side surface of HEAc were shown in
Fig. 4(c) and (d), respectively. The top surface of HEAc was relatively
flat, and the average thickness was about 420 µm. According to the XRD
patterns in Fig. 1(a), HEAc contained the FCC and BCC structures,
which was the same as the vacuum arc-remelting and homogenization
[22,23].
Different from other methods, the heat input of the RESW process
was only the joule heating effect of the adjacent powders, once the
powders and the matrix combined to form a conductor, the joule
heating effect between the powders disappeared. Therefore, the in-
stantaneous joule heating effect between the powders was an important
factor for the formation ability of the coating. In order to evaluate the
effect of the transient joule heating effect on the bonding temperature
of powders, the principle of the RESW process was simplified as shown
in Fig. 5(a). It is assumed that all of the heat generated by the joule
heating effect of adjacent powders was converted to an increase in its
temperature. Therefore, the relationship between joule heating effect
and temperature of powders can be expressed as
Is 2Rpowder Δ t= C v mpowder ΔT
where Is was the total current passing through the powders, Rpowder was
the resistance of powder, and Δt was a quarter of the AC period. Cv,
mpowder, and ΔT were the heat capacity, the mass and the instantaneous
temperature of powder, respectively. In the whole circuit, the powders
and substrate belong to a series circuit. However, the two adjacent
powders in the horizontal direction belong to the parallel circuit as
shown in Fig. 2(a), and the current was set as Ipx. Ipx can be calculated
by Eq. (2):
– 16 I2px ρΔt
–
ΔT=
π CV ρm [r 2-(r − x)2]2
2
(3)
1.35
The x was the distance from the contacting area. All of the para-
meters for calculation were shown in Table 1. The instantaneous dis-
tribution of temperature between the adjacent particles was shown in
Fig. 5(b), in a tiny contact area (x ≤ 0.75 µm), the instantaneous
temperature was over 3000 K much higher than the melting point of
AlFeCrCoNi HEA alloy (~1645 K) [25]. If the distance x was larger than
0.75 µm, the temperature began to decrease sharply and the tempera-
ture at the center of the HEA powder was only about 63 K, which in-
dicated that the substrate was not affected directly by the instantaneous
joule heating effect. Therefore, during the RESW process, the in-
stantaneous joule heating effect first generated high temperature in the
tiny contact area and then combined them, as shown in Fig. 5(c) and
(d). After that, the presence of the gradient temperature, which was
caused by the joule heating effect, was continuously transferred from
the contact area to the center of the particle and other adjacent pow-
ders, eventually, the HEAc was fabricated under the action of the
electrode pressure and the gradient temperature. However, due to the
short contact time of the welding process, a certain number of in-
complete bonding areas such as gaps were also found in Fig. 5(c) and
(d). Compared with the DSC curve of HEA powder in Fig. 2, the DSC
curve of HEAc was relatively stable in the temperature range of
700–1000 K and there was no obvious exothermic peak. An en-
dothermic peak appeared at the end of the curve, which indicated that
the melting point of the HEAc was approximately 1600 K and was
closed to that prepared by the vacuum arc melting and casting method
(~1635 K) [26]. Therefore, the gradient temperature of the RESW
process finally transformed the nanocrystalline HEA powders into the
HEA coating consisted of the BCC and FCC structures. Fig. 6(a) shown
the inverse pole figure (IPF) map of the HEA coating, the crystal-
lographic orientation was distributed disorderly, and the black areas
with an average diameter of 0.12 µm were defects between crystals. In
(1) the phases map of Fig. 6(b), the five phases were homogenously dis-
tributed with an average size of 0.365 µm. According to the XRD and
HETEM results of the HEA powder, the average grain size of crystals in
powder was 2.56–2.9 nm. Thus, the RESW process was not greatly in-
creased the grain size of the phases, and the disorderly small-size grains
may also be beneficial to improve the hardness of the coating.
As shown in Fig. 7, the average hardness of HEAc was 715HV,
which was much higher than the maximum hardness of the bulk
(527HV) [23]. According to the EPMA analysis of the interface between
the HEA coating and substrate in Fig. 8. After welding, as shown by the

6
D. Zhao, et al.
Fig. 12. The SEM image and EDS mappings of the worn surfaces in three conditions. (a), (e), (h) the dry condition, (b), (f), (i) the deionized water condition, and (d),
(g), (j) the 3.5 wt%NaCl solution condition.
Fig. 13. The XPS analysis of the wide spectra of the worn surface in three
conditions.
white dotted line area in Fig. 8(Al), the higher content of aluminum
indicates that the aluminum element in the matrix has diffused into the
gaps of the coating. On the contrary, the elements in HEAc were hardly
7
Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980
diffused into the matrix. Furthermore, no obviously heat effected zone
was found on the substrate suggesting that the heat generation by
RSEW was not brought the adverse effect on the matrix, which was also
consistent with the result of the calculation. Owing to the diffusing of Al
element in the substrate, the EDS elemental mappings of the top surface
in Fig. 9 demonstrated that the element content of Al in the top surface
was more than 2 times higher than other elements. Besides, the EDS
elemental mappings result also shown that the other elements in the
coating were evenly distributed in a near-equal proportion.
3.3. The wear performance of the AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating in three
conditions
The wear performance of the HEAc was investigated in dry, deio-
nized water and 3.5 wt% NaCl solution conditions with different
normal loads. The friction coefficient values of the HEAc and A6061 in
three conditions were demonstrated in Fig. 11(a), the friction coeffi-
cient values of A6061 in three conditions were increased with the in-
creasing of the load. However, all the friction coefficient values of the
HEAc in three cases were lower than A6061 and not changed obviously
with the increase of load, which indicated that the HEAc exhibited good
wear-resistance compared with the substrate. As the wear performance
D. Zhao, et al.
Fig. 14. The XPS high-resolution analysis of the oxidation films on the worn surface in dry condition. (a) Al2p, (b) Fe2p, (c) Cr2p, (d) Co2p and (e) Ni2p.
was proportional to the hardness, the HEAc had an average hardness of
715 HV, which was almost 10 times higher than A6061. The friction
coefficient curves of the HEAc and A6061 in three conditions at a load
of 8 N were taken as an example in Fig. 10. It was clearly identified that
the friction coefficient value of A6061 in dry condition was remarkably
fluctuated and shown an upward trend with the increasing of time.
Contrasted to A6061 in dry condition, the curve of HEAc was extremely
smooth with evidently slight fluctuation, which demonstrated a good
wear-resistance after the test for 3 h. Due to the lubricating effect of
water, the friction coefficient curves of A6061 in deionized water and
NaCl solution conditions were rose rapidly at first and gradually in-
creased to the steady-state, and the average friction coefficient values
were nearly 2.24 and 1.83 times higher than the HEAc, respectively. As
for the wear rate in Fig. 11(b), the wear rates of HEAc in different
conditions were much lower than A6061. For example, at a load of 8 N
in the corrosive environment, the wear rate of HEAc
(0.29 × 10−4 mm3 Nm−1) was about 20 times lower than
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Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980
A6061(5.66 × 10−4 mm3 Nm−1). Therefore, compared with A6061,
the HEAc possessed good wear-resistance in three conditions. More-
over, the maximum wear rate of 0.44 × 10−4 mm3 Nm−1 in the cor-
rosive environment was much lower than that in dry condition
1.75 × 10−4 mm3 Nm−1 and in deionized water condition
0.99 × 10−4 mm3 Nm−1. Consequently, the AlFeCrCoNi HEAc per-
forms best wear resistance in corrosive environment at 8 N. In sum-
mary, the environment significantly influenced the wear performance
of AlFeCrCoNi HEAc, and the deionized water and corrosive environ-
ment reduced the wear rate.
The worn surfaces of HEAc in three conditions with a load of 8 N
were shown in Fig. 11(a)–(g), large-scaled of cracks and peeling pit
areas (the red dotted areas) in all conditions suggesting the existence of
severe adhesive wear [27]. Furthermore, the tiny wear debris on the
worn surface illustrated that the abrasive wear also occurred. Due to the
BCC-phase in AlFeCrCoNi HEA was proved to possesses a higher
hardness and the FCC-phase has good plasticity [28,29]. The BCC
D. Zhao, et al.
Fig. 15. The XPS high-resolution analysis of the oxidation films on the worn surface in deionized water. (a) Al2p, (b) Fe2p, (c) Cr2p, (d) Co2p.
phases were supposed to bear the main load in the coating during the
test, resulting in cracks, while the FCC phase was prone to wrinkle and
may promote the propagation of the crack. Once the hard particles were
impacted into the coating beyond a critical depth, the cracks initiated
and then propagated. Then, the crack-induced peeling area of the
coating was easily damaged and formed the debris particles as shown
by the black dotted circle area in Fig. 11(e), (f) and (g). The ploughing
grooves (the white dotted line) parallel to the sliding direction in
Fig. 11(f) also indicated a wear mechanism of abrasion. In contrast to
the deionized water, a relatively clean morphology and the lower wear
rate in 3.5 wt% NaCl solution suggested that the friction behavior in the
corrosive environment was not only dependent on the water lubrication
but also depended on other factors. In the corrosive condition, Al, Cr,
and Fe had the lower standard electrode potential and were vulnerable
to corrosion. Moreover, in the high-entropy alloy, the elements in-
volved with high activity were favorable to generate passive film.
However, the Cl− in the corrosive environment could attack the passive
films and gradually dissolute the films by the formation of oxide-
chloride compounds [30]. After three hours of continuous friction test,
the oxide-chloride compounds were likely to be completely removed.
The experimental results have shown that the wear rate in this condi-
tion was the lowest. Therefore, corrosive wear has occurred in 3.5 wt%
NaCl solution and beneficial to decrease the wear rate of the coating.
The higher oxygen fraction and distribution on the worn surface in
three conditions, which was confirmed by the EDS detection in Table.2
and the EDS elemental mappings in Fig. 12(h)–(j), indicated that the
oxidative wear was also one of the wear mechanisms. During the in-
stability of Al, Cr elements, with a standard electrode potential of
−1.662, −0.744 [31], the Al2O3 and Cr2O3 films were suspected to be
the main passive coatings. Since the high temperature and friction heat
occurred during the wear test, it was inevitable for the formation of
oxidation films. Moreover, the oxidation films also have a great impact
on the tribological performance of the coating. Thus, the chemical
bonds in the near-surface region of the worn surface were determined
by the XPS test. Fig. 13 were the wide spectra results of the worn
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Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980
surface in three conditions. As seen in Fig. 13, the XPS results show that
the metal-oxygen bonds of all the metal elements were detected in dry
condition, which indicated that all metal elements were oxidized during
the friction. The XPS high-resolution results of the worn surface in dry
condition were shown in Fig. 14. It was clear that the oxidation film
was composed of a large number of metal oxides such as Al2O3, Fe2O3,
Cr2O3, Co3O4, etc. In deionized water condition, in addition to nickel,
other metal elements also oxidized with oxygen offered by the deio-
nized water. The XPS high-resolution results in Fig. 15 also obviously
demonstrated the peaks of Al2p, Fe2p3/2, Cr2p3/2, Cr2p1/2, and
Co2p3/2. In 3.5 wt% NaCl solution condition, under the combined
action of long-term friction and corrosive environment, the oxides on
the surface were dissolved or completely disappeared, and no corre-
sponding peak was found in Fig. 13. In a word, the environment played
an important role in the wear behavior of the AlFeCrCoNi HEAc. The
formation of protective metallic passive film improved the wear re-
sistance. The liquid condition had the function of lubrication and heat
dissipation. Compared with deionized water conditions, the corrosive
wear in 3.5 wt% NaCl solution also elevated the wear resistance of the
coating.
4. Conclusions
In summary, the continuous AlFeCrCoNi high entropy alloy coating
was rapidly fabricated on aluminum alloy by resistance seam welding
method. The instantaneous temperature of the joule heating effect
bonded the HEA powders together and the gradient temperature
transformed the nanocrystalline AlFeCrCoNi powder into the
AlFeCrCoNi HEA coating consisted of FCC and BCC structures. After
welding, the aluminum elements in the matrix penetrated into the
coating and the other elements were evenly distributed in HEAc.
The average hardness of the AlFeCrCoNi HEAc with a thickness of
420 µm was 715 HV0.2, which was higher than that of the same alloy
prepared by other methods. Compared with A6061, the HEAc exhibited
good wear-resistance in three conditions. The wear mechanisms in dry
D. Zhao, et al. Applied Surface Science 517 (2020) 145980

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