Guidelines in predicting phase formation of high-entropy alloys

With multiple elements mixed at equal or near-equal molar ratios, the emerging, high-entropy alloys (HEAs), also named multi-principal elements alloys (MEAs), have posed tremendous challenges to materials scientists and physicists, e.g., how to predict high-entropy phase formation and design alloys. In this paper, we propose some guidelines in predicting phase formation, using thermodynamic and topological parameters of the constituent elements. This guideline together with the existing ones will pave the way toward the composition design of MEAs and HEAs, as well as property optimization based on the composition-structure-property relationship.