Ab initio design of elastically isotropic TiZrNbMoV_x high-entropy alloys

Highlights: • The refractory high-entropy alloys are studied with ab initio theory. • We study the effect of alloying elements on the elastic parameters. • We propose an criterion of elastically isotropic refractory high-entropy alloys. - Abstract: The TiZrVNb and TiZrNbMoV_x (x = 0–1.5) high-entropy alloys (HEAs) are single-phase solid solutions having the body centered cubic crystallographic structure. Here we use the ab initio exact muffin-tin orbitals method in combination with the coherent potential approximation to study the equilibrium bulk properties of the above refractory HEAs. We provide a detailed investigation of the effect of alloying elements on the electronic structure and elastic parameters. Our results indicate that vanadium enhances the anisotropy of TiZrNbMoV_x. As an application of the present theoretical database, we verify the often quoted correlation between the valence electron concentration (VEC) and the micro-mechanical properties in the case of multi-component alloys. Furthermore, we predict that the present HEAs become elastically isotropic for VEC∼4.72