Solid solution strengthening (SSS) significantly influences the mechanical properties of alloy materials, which strongly depends on the solute type and concentration and various alloy structures. However, it still presents a significant challenge to identify a universal structure-property relationship of SSS. Here, we propose an intrinsic descriptor to quantify the electronic effect of SSS for both dilute and concentrated alloys from the point of bond breaking and forming, which allows to evaluate the SSS effect across various alloys, such as binary, medium-entropy, and high-entropy alloys, regardless of the solute type and concentration and alloy structures. Our descriptor reflects the key parameter—solute/dislocation interactions, indicates that the center and upper edge of d-bands control the SSS effects, and identifies that the d-d/d-s coupling dominates the size effects of SSS for dilute alloys and the d-d coupling for concentrated alloys. This simple element-determined recipe provides a deep understanding of the SSS mechanism and a physical guidance for designing high-performance alloys.

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• Defects
• Hardness
• Alloys
• Metals
• Solid solutions
• Density functional theory
• Tight-binding model