Understanding deformation of metallic glasses

Since their introduction in the 1960s, the interest in metallic glasses has grown steadily, owing to their interesting magnetic, mechanical, and corrosion properties, as well as the continuous development of new alloys that remain amorphous at larger and larger size scales. Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) have no long-range atomic order, and hence exhibit a completely different structure at the atomic level to their crystalline counterparts. The fundamental mechanisms governing their processing-structure - property relationships are also different and generally less well-understood.

For instance, whereas crystal defects such as dislocations usually control plastic deformation in crystalline materials, such defects do not exist in BMGs where plastic deformation often occurs in a mode of runaway shear band formation. Studies on the deformation mechanisms of metallic glasses have often been reported in Acta Materialia and Scripta Materialia, and are still the subject of intense discussion. 

Prof. Todd Hufnagel has been invited to write a follow-up on an Overview article published in Acta Materialia in 2007, and one of the most-highly cited articles in the journal. This new Overview article, Deformation of metallic glasses: Recent developments in theory, simulations, and experiments is available for free here.

Over half-a-dozen articles related to this topic have also been published in the past few issues of Acta Materialia and Scripta Materialia. Here is a selection of articles that have been made available to read for free for the next six months:

• On the critical thickness for non-localized to localized plastic flow transition in metallic glasses: A molecular dynamics study
   
• Toughen and harden metallic glass through designing statistical heterogeneity
   
• Shear band relaxation in a deformed bulk metallic glass 
   
• Competition between shear band nucleation and propagation across rate-dependent flow transitions in a model metallic glass
   
• Mapping of residual strains around a shear band in bulk metallic glass by nanobeam X-ray diffraction
   
• Co-existence of homogeneous flow and localized plastic deformation in tension of amorphous Ni–P films on ductile substrate

We hope you enjoy reading those articles.

Prof. Chris Schuh (Coordinating Editor)

Dr Baptiste Gault (Associate Editor)