Abstract
Tailoring the intrinsic length-scale effects in bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) via post-heat treatment necessitates a systematic analyzing strategy. Although various achievements were made in the past years to structurally enhance the properties of different BMG alloys, the influence of short-term sub-glass transition annealing on the relaxation kinetics is still not fully covered. Here, we aim for unraveling the connection between the physical, (thermo)mechanical and structural changes as a function of selected pre-annealing temperatures and time scales with an in-house developed Cu46Zr44Al8Hf2 based BMG alloy. The controlled formation of nanocrystals below 50 nm with homogenous distribution inside the matrix phase via thermal treatment increase the material’s resistance to strain softening by almost an order of magnitude. The present work determines the design aspects of metallic glasses with enhanced mechanical properties via nanostructural modifications, while postulating a counter-argument to the intrinsic property degradation accounted for long-term annealing.
Highlights
The today’s tendency for creating high performance materials is towards generating advanced alloys with controllable properties[1,2,3]
We show the influence of thermal annealing at different temperatures and time intervals, and to what extent the mechanical and physical properties are altered by slight nanostructural modifications taking place in CuZr-based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs)
The annealing induced structural modifications on the course of heat treatment was investigated for various annealing temperatures as well as for different time scales
Summary
The today’s tendency for creating high performance materials is towards generating advanced alloys with controllable properties[1,2,3]. Recent investigations on the effect of long-term isothermal treatment of BMGs below the glass transition temperature conducted by different groups[11,12,13] clearly identified the modifications of mechanical and thermal properties due to structural relaxation This irreversible process is accounted for the annihilation of free volume via densification caused by annealing[8]. The concept behind the improved plasticity is linked to the short-term heat treatment at sub-Tg temperatures, where the structural modifications occur in the chemical and topological short-range order[12] This mechanical property enhancement is achieved by continuous heating until the target temperature is reached, and rapid cooling of the sample immediately after the desired processing temperature is stabilized. We show the influence of thermal annealing at different temperatures and time intervals, and to what extent the mechanical and physical properties are altered by slight nanostructural modifications taking place in CuZr-based BMG
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