Abstract
Metallic alloys are normally composed of multiple constituent elements in order to achieve integration of a plurality of properties required in technological applications. However, conventional alloy development paradigm, by sequential trial-and-error approach, requires completely unrelated strategies to optimize compositions out of a vast phase space, making alloy development time consuming and labor intensive. Here, we challenge the conventional paradigm by proposing a combinatorial strategy that enables parallel screening of a multitude of alloys. Utilizing a typical metallic glass forming alloy system Zr-Cu-Al-Ag as an example, we demonstrate how glass formation and antibacterial activity, two unrelated properties, can be simultaneously characterized and the optimal composition can be efficiently identified. We found that in the Zr-Cu-Al-Ag alloy system fully glassy phase can be obtained in a wide compositional range by co-sputtering, and antibacterial activity is strongly dependent on alloy compositions. Our results indicate that antibacterial activity is sensitive to Cu and Ag while essentially remains unchanged within a wide range of Zr and Al. The proposed strategy not only facilitates development of high-performing alloys, but also provides a tool to unveil the composition dependence of properties in a highly parallel fashion, which helps the development of new materials by design.
Highlights
Metallic alloys are normally composed of multiple constituent elements in order to achieve integration of a plurality of properties required in technological applications
Among the studied metallic glass forming alloys for antibacterial activity, Zr-Cu-Al-Ag system is of special interest because it contains both Cu and Ag that are well-known antibacterial elements[17,18], and shows excellent glass forming ability which is beneficial for mass production[19,20,21]
The combinatorial strategy to screen thin film metallic glasses with antibacterial activity starts with the fabrication of materials library by magnetron co-sputtering deposition, as schematically illustrated in Fig. 1(a), with which the composition gradient of the materials library can be controlled and varied either through tuning the sputter power applied on targets or through the target-to-substrate orientation[3]
Summary
Metallic alloys are normally composed of multiple constituent elements in order to achieve integration of a plurality of properties required in technological applications. Conventional alloy development paradigm, by sequential trial-and-error approach, requires completely unrelated strategies to optimize compositions out of a vast phase space, making alloy development time consuming and labor intensive. Our results indicate that antibacterial activity is sensitive to Cu and Ag while essentially remains unchanged within a wide range of Zr and Al. The proposed strategy facilitates development of high-performing alloys, and provides a tool to unveil the composition dependence of properties in a highly parallel fashion, which helps the development of new materials by design. Metallic alloys used in engineering are most commonly composed of more than three elements to obtain the required properties To achieve such attributes, completely unrelated development strategies are employed to optimize the composition of a technologically useful alloy. The developed combinatorial strategy, described is not limited to metallic glasses and can be extended to other material classes
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