Interface design enabled manufacture of giant metallic glasses

Abstract

Developing materials with excellent properties has been the untiring pursuit of mankind. Metallic glasses (MGs) would be the ideal metallic materials if their size could be scaled up to be comparable to traditional metals. To address this challenge, a variety of approaches have been attempted over the past decades, including thermodynamics-based alloy, 3D printing and the recent artificial intelligence-guided optimal alloy. In this study, a facile and flexible route was demonstrated to manufacture giant MGs (GMGs) with diameters more than 100 mm through the thermo-joining process. The jointed GMG samples feature almost the same performance as the as-cast ones. The ability of manufacturing complex 3D components such as the Chinese Zodiacs was also demonstrated. Our approach might overcome the longstanding problem of glass forming ability (GFA) limitations in alloy systems and pave new concept and route to fabricate size unlimited MGs.