METALLIC GLASSES: RECORD-BREAKING PROPERTIES FOR ALLOYS

Professor Lindsay Greer (University of Cambridge, Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy)

The familiar silicate glasses have been made by man for some 5000 years; metallic glasses have been known for just 50. While metallic glasses have been much studied, they are still presenting us with surprises. They are of interest for many reasons (in early days particularly for their soft-magnetic properties), but this presentation will focus on their structure and particularly on their mechanical properties -- now of increasing interest because the glasses are available in bulk (i.e. with cross-sections of up to a few cms). Metallic glasses have higher yield stresses than any other metallic materials. High yield stress typically means low toughness. But recent work has yielded a metallic glass with high yield stress and high toughness. Even more remarkable, especially for a monolithic glass, is that this material has a damage tolerance (the product of yield stress and toughness) that is higher than any other known material! We will consider this and related results, and consider whether the remarkable properties of MGs might be still further improved.

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Intrinsic plasticity or brittleness of metallic glasses, J.J. Lewandowski, W.H. Wang, A.L. Greer, Philos. Mag. Lett. 85 (2005) 77.
Poisson's ratio and modern materials, G.N. Greaves, A.L. Greer, R.S. Lakes, T. Rouxel, Nature Mater. 10 (2011) 823.
A damage-tolerant glass, M.D. Demetriou et al., Nature Mater. 10 (2011) 123.
Damage tolerance at a price, A.L. Greer, Nature Mater. 10 (2011) 88.
Induced elastic anisotropy in a bulk metallic glass, A. Concustell et al., Scripta Mater. 64 (2011) 1091.