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High entropy alloy (HEA) films of CrFeCoNiCu were deposited by sputtering. Their structure was characterized and their electric transport properties were studied by temperature-dependent Hall and Seebeck measurements. The HEA films show a solid solution with an fcc structure. The residual electrical resistivity of the films is around 130 μΩ cm, which is higher than the Mott limit for a metal while the temperature dependence of the resistivity above 30 K is metal-like but with a small temperature coefficient of resistivity (2 ppm/K). The dominant scattering mechanism of charge carriers is alloy scattering due to chemical disorder in the HEA. The Hall coefficient is positive while the Seebeck coefficient is negative. This is interpreted as arising from an electronic structure where the Fermi level passes through band states having both holes and electrons as indicated by band structure calculations. Below 30 K, the conduction is discussed in terms of weak localization and Kondo effects. The HEA structure appears stable for annealing in vacuum, while annealing in an oxygen-containing atmosphere causes the surface to oxidize and grow a Cr-rich oxide on the surface. This is then accompanied by demixing of the HEA solid solution and a decrease in the effective resistance of the film.

Highly ordered mesoporous silicas such as, mobile composition of matter, MCM-41, MCM-48, and the SBA-types of materials have helped to a large extent to understand the formation mechanisms of the pore structure of adsorbents and to improve the methods of pore structural characterization. It still remains an open question whether the high order, the regularity of the pore system, and the narrow pore size distribution of the materials will lead to a substantial benefit when these materials are employed in liquid phase separation processes. MCM-41 type 10 microm beads are synthesized following the route of pseudomorphic transformation of highly porous amorphous silicas. Highly porous silicas and the pseudomorphically transformed derivatives are characterized by nitrogen sorption at 77 K and by inverse size-exclusion chromatography (ISEC) employing polystyrene standards. Applying the network model developed by Grimes, we calculated the pore connectivity n(T) of the materials. The value of n(T) varies between the percolation threshold of the lattice and values of n(T) > 10, the latter being the limiting value above which the material can be considered to be almost infinitely connected such that the ISEC behavior of the material calculated with the pore network model is the same when calculated with a parallel pore model which assumes an infinite connectivity. One should expect that the pore connectivity is reflected in the column performance, when these native and unmodified materials are packed into columns and tested with low molecular weight analytes in the Normal Phase LC mode. As found in a previous study on monolithic silicas and highly porous silicas, the slope of the plate height (HETP) - linear velocity (u) curve decreased significantly with enhanced pore connectivity of the materials. First results on the pseudomorphically transformed MCM-41 type silicas and their highly porous amorphous precursors showed that (i) the transformation did not change the pore connectivity (within the limits detectable by ISEC) from the starting material to the final product and (ii) the slope of the HETP versus u curve for dibutylphtalate did not change significantly after the pseudomorphic transformation.