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Structural rejuvenation and toughening of bulk metallic glass via ultrasound excitation technique

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Abstract

Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) represent a class of solid materials which have randomly packed atomic structure in long range but exhibit unique properties. Nowadays, the macroscopic brittleness at ambient temperature is the fundamental and intriguing issue to impede the engineering application of BMGs. In this article, we report a breakthrough in solving the strength-ductility tradeoff dilemma of BMGs by introducing strong forced vibration of atoms named ultrasonic vibration (USV) technique. We find that not only the ambient temperature compressive plasticity is remarkably increased but also yield strength is augmented by kHZ level USV treatment. The toughening of BMGs has also been evidenced by the pronounced increase in the first pop-in event, which represents by the critical stress to stimulate the initial yield with the formation of shear band. It has also been confirmed that the free volume in USV treated BMGs is strikingly increased. Therefore, the intrinsic mechanism of USV induced toughening can be interpreted in the frame of structural heterogeneities and energy landscape theory, i.e., the USV induced structural rejuvenation by increasing the loosely packed soft regions and decreasing the closely packed hard regions. The basins that possess larger potential energies are overwhelmingly increased after USV treatment. Our findings provide a new approach for surmounting strength-ductility trade-off dilemma of single atom glassy matter such as BMGs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physical Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China

    Wei Zhai, Ying Xiao, LiHui Nie & BingBo Wei

  2. State Key Laboratory for Advanced Metals and Materials, University of Science & Technology, Beijing, 100083, China

    XiDong Hui & Tuo Wang

  3. School of Materials, Civil Engineering and Architecture, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China

    JiChao Qiao

  4. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    ShaoLou Wei

Authors
  1. Wei Zhai
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  2. XiDong Hui
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  3. Ying Xiao
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  5. ShaoLou Wei
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  6. Tuo Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to BingBo Wei.

Additional information

The authors thank Prof. Hong Z Y and Dr. Geng D L for their helpful discussion, and also thank Mr. Hu Y J for his help in preparing the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51922089, 51972275, 51871185, 51727803 & 51872241) and the Key Research Plan in Shanxi Province (Grant No. 2018GY-104).

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Zhai, W., Hui, X., Xiao, Y. et al. Structural rejuvenation and toughening of bulk metallic glass via ultrasound excitation technique. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 63, 2395–2402 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-020-1691-5

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