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Revelation of the effect of structural heterogeneity on microplasticity in bulk metallic-glasses

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Abstract

In this article, the shear-banding behavior in bulk metallic-glasses (BMGs) is studied using a focused ion beam (FIB)-based nanoindentation method, which involves cylindrical nanoindentation of a FIB-milled BMG microlamella and is capable of revealing the subsurface shear-band patterns down to the submicron scale. The results of the current study on a Zr-based BMG clearly show that short shear bands, with the lengths of a few hundred nanometers, could be severely kinked before growing into a longer one, which implies that structural heterogeneity plays an important role in the microplasticity of BMGs. Furthermore, through the three-dimensional finite-element simulation combined with the theoretical calculation based on the Mohr–Coulomb law, it is found that the yield strengths exhibit a large scatter as a consequence of the structural heterogeneity when microplasticity occurs in the Zr-based BMG, which is consistent with our recent findings obtained from the microcompression experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    Yong Yang, Jianchao Ye, Jian Lu & Qing Wang

  2. The Institute of Materials Science, The University of Shanghai, 200072, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Qing Wang

  3. The Department of Material Science and Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, 37996-2200, USA

    Peter K. Liaw

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  1. Yong Yang
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Correspondence to Yong Yang.

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Yang, Y., Ye, J., Lu, J. et al. Revelation of the effect of structural heterogeneity on microplasticity in bulk metallic-glasses. Journal of Materials Research 25, 563–575 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1557/JMR.2010.0058

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