Size-dependent mechanical responses of metallic glasses

ABSTRACT

Metallic glasses (MGs) are arguably one of the most exciting metallic systems in the past 30 years, attracting significant research effort and undergoing rapid development. Parallel to research on crystalline metals, the sample size has been exploited as property-tuning parameters for MGs. It has been shown that nanometre-sized MG samples exhibit higher-than-bulk elastic limit, tensile strength, and non-zero tensile ductility. While some of the size-related observations have been generally accepted, others have been poorly understood, even hotly debated. Of particular interests is the importance of sample preparation in experiments and model generation in simulations. Here, we will review how the sample size affects mechanical properties including the elastic, plastic, fracture properties, and fatigue endurance, as well as various proposed size-dependent mechanisms and relevant length scales.

KEYWORDS:

• Metallic glasses
• size-dependence
• mechanical properties
• sample preparation
• elasticity
• yield
• shear band
• fracture
• fatigue
• length scale

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant DMR-1207439, and DMR-1508410. We are also grateful for the support of the New York State Center for Future Energy Systems (CFES), and the Center for Computational Innovations (CCI) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.