Abstract
A common understanding of plastic deformation of metallic glasses (MGs) at room temperature is that such deformation occurs via the formation of runaway shear bands that usually lead to catastrophic failure of MGs. Here we demonstrate that inhomogeneous plastic flow at nanoscale can evolve in a well-controlled manner without further developing of shear bands. It is suggested that the sample undergoes an elasto-plastic transition in terms of quasi steady-state localized shearing. During this transition, embryonic shear localization (ESL) propagates with a very slow velocity of order of ~1 nm/s without the formation of a hot matured shear band. This finding further advances our understanding of the microscopic deformation process associated with the elasto-plastic transition and may shed light on the theoretical development of shear deformation in MGs.
Highlights
A common understanding of plastic deformation of metallic glasses (MGs) at room temperature is that such deformation occurs via the formation of runaway shear bands that usually lead to catastrophic failure of MGs
Because shear bands provide preferential sites for the ongoing plastic flow responsible for most catastrophic failures, it is widely thought that the highly localized shearing and resultant strain softening are the main causes for the low ductility of BMGs6–8
Nowadays in-situ nanoscale mechanical experiments of metallic materials in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) can dramatically improve the spatial resolution of the deformation process that may help to advance the understanding of the intrinsic characteristics of bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) deformation[21]
Summary
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to N.C. In addition to the BMG composites, small MG samples subjected to tensile tests show promising plasticity in a manner via both homogeneous and inhomogeneous flow without catastrophic failure[10] This has stimulated intensive interest in disclosing the basic physics behind the microscopic deformation mechanisms of MGs from both theoretical and experimental aspects[11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20]. This work advances our understanding of the microscopic deformation process related to the elasto-plastic transition before nucleation of a matured shear band, which sheds light on the theoretical development of shear deformation mechanisms in MGs
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