The origin of the deformation in metallic glasses is attributed to rearrangements of atoms in some structurally weak spots behaving as flow units, which are associated with free volumes. In the present study, Xe-ion beam is used to manipulate the free-volume fraction, and influence on the mechanical behavior of a Zr-based metallic glass. The irradiation at low dosages can change the structure by increasing the free volume, and by homogenising the distribution of free volume. The increase in the free-volume fraction is equivalent to the increase in the deformation temperature, thus resulting in the decrease in the yield strength. The analysis of stochastic strain burst size in the metallic glass irradiated at different dosages indicates that the strain burst depends on the yield strength and homogeneity of the glassy phase. The results of this study highlight the fact that the quantitative manipulation of the homogeneity and the amount of free volumes can be achieved through low-dose ion irradiation, which can modify the mechanical behavior of metallic glasses.

The plastic flow of bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) is characterized by intermittent bursts of avalanches, and this trend results in disastrous failures of BMGs. In the present work, a double-side-notched BMG specimen is designed, which exhibits chaotic plastic flows consisting of several catastrophic avalanches under the applied loading. The disastrous shear avalanches have, then, been delayed by forming a stable plastic-flow stage in the specimens with tailored distances between the bottoms of the notches, where the distribution of a complex stress field is acquired. Differing from the conventional compressive testing results, such a delaying process is independent of loading rate. The statistical analysis shows that in the specimens with delayed catastrophic failures, the plastic flow can evolve to a critical dynamics, making the catastrophic failure more predictable than the ones with chaotic plastic flows. The findings are of significance in understanding the plastic-flow mechanisms in BMGs and controlling the avalanches in relating solids.

A model Zr41.25Ti13.75Ni10Cu12.5Be22.5 (at.%) bulk metallic glass (BMG) is selected to explore the structural evolution on the atomic scale with decreasing temperature down to cryogenic level using high energy X-ray synchrotron radiation. We discover a close correlation between the atomic structure evolution and the strength of the BMG and find out that the activation energy increment of the concordantly atomic shifting at lower temperature is the main factor influencing the strength. Our results might provide a fundamental understanding of the atomic-scale structure evolution and may bridge the gap between the atomic-scale physics and the macro-scale fracture strength for BMGs.

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Changes in intermittent shear avalanches during plastic deformation of a Cu 50 Zr 45 Ti 5 (atomic percent) alloy in response to variant structures including fully glassy phase and/or nanocrystal/glass binary phase are investigated. Second crystalline phases are introduced into the glassy-phase matrix of a Cu 50 Zr 45 Ti 5 metallic glass to interfere with the shear-avalanche process, which can release the shear-strain concentration, and then tune the critically-dynamic behavior of the shear avalanche. By combining microstructural observations of the nanocrystals with the statistical analysis of the corresponding deformation behavior, we determine the statistic distribution of shear-avalanche sizes during plastic deformation, and established its dependence on the geometric distribution of nanocrystals. The scaling behavior of the distribution of shear-avalanche sizes follows a power-law relation accompanied by an exponentially-decaying scaling function in the pure metallic glass, and the metallic glass containing the small nanocrystals, which can be described by the mean-field theory. The large shear-avalanche events are dominated by structural tuning-parameters, i.e., the resistance of shear banding, and the size and volume fraction of the second crystalline phase in metallic glasses.