Substantially enhanced plasticity of bulk metallic glasses by densifying local atomic packing.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34772939.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-26858-9 and PMC identifier 8590062.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Introducing regions of looser atomic packing in bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) was reported to facilitate plastic deformation, rendering BMGs more ductile at room temperature. Here, we present a different alloy design approach, namely, doping the nonmetallic elements to form densely packed motifs. The enhanced structural fluctuations in Ti-, Zr- and Cu-based BMG systems leads to improved strength and renders these solutes' atomic neighborhoods more prone to plastic deformation at an increased critical stress. As a result, we simultaneously increased the compressive plasticity (from ∼8% to unfractured), strength (from ∼1725 to 1925 MPa) and toughness (from 87 ± 10 to 165 ± 15 MPa√m), as exemplarily demonstrated for the Zr<sub>20</sub>Cu<sub>20</sub>Hf<sub>20</sub>Ti<sub>20</sub>Ni<sub>20</sub> BMG. Our study advances the understanding of the atomic-scale origin of structure-property relationships in amorphous solids and provides a new strategy for ductilizing BMG without sacrificing strength.