Towards the Better: Intrinsic Property Amelioration in Bulk Metallic Glasses.
Tailoring the intrinsic length-scale effects in bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) via post-heat treatment necessitates a systematic analyzing strategy. Although various achievements were made in the past years to structurally enhance the properties of different BMG alloys, the influence of short-term sub-glass transition annealing on the relaxation kinetics is still not fully covered. Here, we aim for unraveling the connection between the physical, (thermo)mechanical and structural changes as a function of selected pre-annealing temperatures and time scales with an in-house developed Cu46Zr44Al8Hf2 based BMG alloy. The controlled formation of nanocrystals below 50 nm with homogenous distribution inside the matrix phase via thermal treatment increase the material's resistance to strain softening by almost an order of magnitude. The present work determines the design aspects of metallic glasses with enhanced mechanical properties via nanostructural modifications, while postulating a counter-argument to the intrinsic property degradation accounted for long-term annealing.
IFW Dresden, Institute for Complex Materials, Helmholtzstr. 20, D-01069 Dresden, Germany.
Baran
B
Sarac
IFW Dresden, Institute for Complex Materials, Helmholtzstr. 20, D-01069 Dresden, Germany.|Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 110016 Shenyang, China.
Long
L
Zhang
IFW Dresden, Institute for Complex Materials, Helmholtzstr. 20, D-01069 Dresden, Germany.
Konrad
K
Kosiba
IFW Dresden, Institute for Complex Materials, Helmholtzstr. 20, D-01069 Dresden, Germany.
Simon
S
Pauly
IFW Dresden, Institute for Complex Materials, Helmholtzstr. 20, D-01069 Dresden, Germany.|Politehnica University of Timisoara, P-ta Victoriei 2, RO-300006 Timisoara, Romania.
Mihai
M
Stoica
Erich Schmid Institute of Materials Science, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), Jahnstrasse 12, A-8700 Leoben, Austria.|Department Materials Physics, Montanuniversität Leoben, Jahnstrasse 12, A-8700 Leoben, Austria.
Jürgen
J
Eckert