Ternary Fe–W–B bulk metallic glasses with ultrahigh thermal stabilities

Abstract

Fe-based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) with broad application prospects often exhibit good comprehensive properties. However, they are facing the bottleneck problem of structural instability during the long-term service process due to their own metastable state. In this work, a new ternary system of Fe–W–B BMGs with ultrahigh thermal stabilities, where the glass transition temperature of Fe59W23B18 BMG reached to 923 K and the onset crystallization temperature above 970 K, were successfully developed. In addition, the Fe–W–B BMGs exhibit very high micro-hardness of 1280–1380 HV and high density about 9.6 g/cm3. The ultrahigh thermal stability and hardness are closely related to the prominent covalent bonds in the Fe–W–B BMGs. The ternary Fe–W–B BMGs with outstanding thermal properties and simple chemical components are promising materials for use in extreme service environment and model materials to understand the glass formation mechanism of Fe-based BMGs.