High Entropy Alloys as Filler Metals for Joining
, Liam Hardwick 1, Robert Snell 1, Matthew Way 1, Xavier Sanuy Morell 1, Frances Livera 1, Nicholas Ludford 3, Chinnapat Panwisawas 4, Hongbiao Dong 4 and Russell Goodall 1,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Well prepared review. I recommend publishing.
The main question addressed by the review is, if the properties of joins can be improved by changing the filler metals to HEAs. The main joining methods discussed are soldering and brazing. This topic is interesting and worth examining.
The authors overview literature data and present them is a systematic way to show what can be expected from HEA materials already examined in the literature. Originality is presented by the fact that many of the cited data are from publications of 6 of the authors and such systematic other collection is not known to the reviewer. They start by enlisting some of the existing filler materials used for either soldering or brazing, pointing out the areas that could and should be improved by application of HEAs. Important aspects for improvement are extending the temperature range of application not only upward but also to narrow the temperature gap between existing soldering and brazing techniques. Similarly elimination of poisonous or expensive/rare materials is also a driving force. Special problems induced by fillers that substitute Pb-containing fillers (whisker growth, creation of Kirkendal-voids, etc.) are also addressed. They also examine the question of service reliability. The authors address these questions one-by-one treating both traditional HEAs and new HEA compositions that can be found in the literature (a significant fraction is their own).
The paper is well written and easy to read. The cited literature provide sufficient support for the conclusions.
On the basis of these, I recommend publication of the manuscript.
Author Response
Thank you for your reading of our manuscript, and the supportive comments offered. As we do not see any specific points raised for correction, we have not made any particular changes to the manuscript in the light of this review.
Reviewer 2 Report
The work has a very rich literature review outliningthe research problem. The presented results are complete
and their discussion does not raise any objections. Unfortunately, the quality of the drawings
in the presented form is low - it concerns especially figs 7, 11, 12
- maybe it concerns the handed over work,
but in the original it is much better?
Author Response
Thank you for your reading of our manuscript and the supportive comments. With regard to the figures, some are our own, and some, where acknowledged, are taken from the literature with permission. For some of the sources images we are limited in the resolutions available, but we have been through the manuscript and have increased both the size and the resolution of each figure as much as possible to try and counter this problem.
