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Significant room-temperature plasticity in a high Zr-containing bulk glassy alloy

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Abstract

In this study, the glass forming ability, thermal stability, and room-temperature mechanical behavior of a high Zr-containing Zr71Cu11Ni10.5Al7Ti0.5 bulk glassy alloy were investigated. The glassy alloy exhibits a high glass-forming ability with a critical casting diameter of 5 mm using copper mold injection casting, and its critical cooling rate is estimated to be smaller than 40 K/s. A small kinetic fragility index m of 32 indicates its good thermodynamic stability and glass-forming ability. Compressive tests indicate that the glassy alloy displays a significant average plastic strain of 12.3%, a high fracture strength of 1592 MPa, and Young’s modulus of 74.5 GPa. The good ductility is attributed to the introduction of more free volume and local compositional inhomogeneity with increasing Zr addition. This finding may provide useful guidelines for the development of novel high Zr-containing glassy alloys.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to J.X. Tu, Q. Hu, G.Q. Peng, J.Z. Zou, and Y.H. Yan for technical assistance, and also thank X.R. Zeng, H.Y. Zhang, X.B. Xiong, and X.H. Li for enlightening discussions. S.S.C. would like to acknowledge the financial support by the fund of State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing in NWPU (Grant No. SKLSP201919), State Key Laboratory of Advanced Metals and Materials in USTB (Grant No. 2019-Z01), Startup Doctoral Foundation of Anhui University of Technology (Grant No. DT17100092), Youth Foundation of Anhui University of Technology (Grant No. QZ201805), Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (Grant No. 1908085ME147), and Science and Technology R&D Program of Shenzhen (Grant No. JCYJ20160520175916066).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Anhui University of Technology, 243002, Ma’anshan, China

    Shuangshuang Chen

  2. Key Laboratory of Green Fabrication and Surface Technology of Advanced Metal Materials, Anhui University of Technology, Ministry of Education, 243002, Ma’anshan, China

    Shuangshuang Chen

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Anhui University of Technology, 243002, Ma’anshan, China

    Peidi Song & Dong Xing

  4. School of Management Science and Engineering, Anhui University of Technology, 243002, Ma’anshan, China

    Jiahua Zou

  5. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Shenzhen University, 518060, Shenzhen, China

    Xida Deng

  6. State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 710072, Xi’an, China

    Feng Liu

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  1. Shuangshuang Chen
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Correspondence to Shuangshuang Chen.

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Chen, S., Song, P., Xing, D. et al. Significant room-temperature plasticity in a high Zr-containing bulk glassy alloy. Journal of Materials Research 35, 1590–1597 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2020.94

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