Self-organized nanocrystalline stripe patterns generated during early crystallization of a nonequilibrium metallic glass

Abstract

The author reports a unique early-stage (the crystallized volume fraction ∼0.20) self-organized nanocrystalline stripe pattern phenomenon that nanoscale phase separation and nucleation simultaneously work together, representing a type that had never been previously observed in a metastable alloy solid. The first observation of mesoscopic self-organized crystallization showed that self-organization is not limited to the case of organic matter, thus potentially offering an insight into the mechanism of the nonequilibrium (nano)crystallization of metallic glasses.