Controlling the Electrical Properties of Reactively Sputtered High Entropy Alloy CrFeNiCoCu Films

Abstract

Oxide-containing films were made by reactively sputtering a high-entropy alloy target of CrFeCoNiCu. We report on a wide range of changes to the electrical properties made by different heat treatments in oxidizing and reducing atmospheres, respectively. We combine temperature-dependent Hall effect measurements down to 10 K to study the transport mechanisms and correlate that with structural measurements by x-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The measured/effective resistivity could be varied between 1.3 × 10−4 Ω cm and 1.2 × 10−3 Ω cm by post-deposition processing. The temperature coefficient of resistivity could be varied between − 1.2 × 10−3 K−1 through 0 and to + 0.7 × 10−3 K−1. The key to the variation is controlling the morphology and topology of the film. The conduction of charge carriers is dominated by the relative contribution of weak localization and alloy scattering by varying the degree of disorder in the metallic high-entropy alloy and its topology.