Since the first discovery of amorphous alloys in 1960, researchers have explored many unique mechanical, magnetic, and optical characteristics of such materials for potential applications. Up to now, well-developed processes, such as rapid quenching, sputtering, evaporation, pulse laser deposition, etc, have been applied for different applications in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Due to the lack of ordered structure, amorphous alloys can bear a high stress in the elastic region. Their plastic deformation stability is also of interest and has been widely studied. The shear-band characteristic, a kind of inhomogeneous deformation mechanism, dominates the deformation after yielding at room temperature. While a shear band nucleate, its propagation usually cannot be arrested or stopped. In other words, the occurrence of matured shear bands needs to be prevented. There are two major approaches in this aspect. The first is to increase the material yield strength so as to delay the shear band nucleation. Another is to incorporate intrinsic or extrinsic particles so as to absorb the kinetic energy of shear bands in the amorphous matrix. In this study, we utilize three strategies to control the propagation of shear bands in thin film metallic glasses (TFMGs): sub-Tg annealing, the addition of strong element in solute form, and the introduction of strong nanocrystalline layers. For sub-Tg annealing, the base alloy system is Zr69Cu31, with a base film hardness of 5.1 GPa measured by nanoindentation. After annealing, the hardness exhibits ~30% increase. Without the occurrence of the phase transformation, as confirmed by X-ray diffraction, the possible reaction during sub-Tg annealing is attributed to structural relaxation, not crystallization. The full width at half maximum of the X-ray peak exhibits a decreasing trend in the using X-ray and transmission electron microscopy diffraction, meaning the excess free volumes forming during vapor-to-solid deposition process would be annihilated by localized atomic re-arrangement. Moreover, the formation of medium-ordering-range clusters was confirmed utilizing high-resolution transmission electronic microscopy. The denser amorphous structure leads to the increment of hardness. For the addition of Ta in Zr55Cu31Ti14, sputtering provides a wide glass forming range with solubility of Ta approaching ~75 at%. With increasing Ta content, the elastic modulus and hardness increase slowly. A steep rise occurs at ~50 at% of Ta. Up to 75 at% of Ta, the elastic modulus and hardness approaches 140 GPa and 10.0 GPa, respectively (100% increment). Up to now, Ta-rich TFMGs exhibit the highest elastic modulus and hardness among all amorphous alloys fabricated using vapor deposition techniques. The irregular increase is attributed to the formation of Ta-Ta bonding. A large quantity of Ta bonds would lead to the formation of Ta-rich nanoclusters, drastically decreasing the strain rate while shear band propagates under nanoindentation and microcompression tests. The introduction of nanocrystalline Ta layers can not only effectively enhance the yield strength but also serve as the absorber for the kinetic energy of shear bands, revealing ductility in the microcompression test.

The Pd77Cu6Si17 (PCS) thin film metallic glasses (TFMGs) with high glass forming ability and hardness are selected as a hard coating for improving the surface hardness of the AZ31 magnesium alloy. Both micro- and nano-indentation tests are conducted on the specimens with various PCS film thicknesses from 30 to 2000 nm. The apparent hardness and the relative indentation depth (£]) are integrated by a quantitative model. The involved interaction parameters and relative hardness values are extracted from iterative calculations. According to the results, surface hardness can be enhanced greatly by PCS TFMGs in the shallow region, followed by gradual decrease with increasing £] ratio. In addition, the specimens with thinner coating (for example, 200 nm) show greater substrate-film interaction and those with thick coating (for example, 2000 nm) become prone to film cracking. The optimum TFMG coating thickness in this study is estimated to be around 200 nm. Keywords: Magnesium alloys, hardness, sputtering, thin film metallic glass, nanoindentation

BMGs (bulk metallic glasses) exhibit many exceptional advantages for engineering applications, such as high strength, good corrosion resistance, etc. Despite of having these excellent properties, the brittle nature of metallic glasses in the bulk and thin film forms inevitably imposes limitation and restricts the wide application of BMGs and TFMGs. Composite concept might be another idea to solve this dilemma. In order to manufacture the bulk metallic glass composites (BMGCs), the approaches are classified into two categories: the intrinsic and extrinsic methods. For the intrinsic method, the in situ process and heat treatment process are two kinds of ways in common uses. Adding reinforcements into the BMGs or TFMGs is extensively used to manufacture composites in the extrinsic method. In this study, the deformation behaviors of multilayer (amorphous/nanocrystalline) micropillars are studied by uniaxial microcompression tests at room temperature. The nanocrystalline layer to be coupled with the amorphous layer can be of either face-centered cubic (FCC), hexagonal close-packed (HCP) or body-centered cubic (BCC) in crystal structure. The current study demonstrates that brittle problem of a metallic glass coating can be alleviated by percolating with a nanocrystalline metallic underlayer. The brittle thin film metallic glass can become highly ductile and exhibit a plastic strain over 50% at room temperature. The present study has an important implication for MEMS applications, namely, the life span of a brittle amorphous layer can be significantly improved by using an appropriate metallic underlayer. The brittle problem of thin film ZrCu metallic glasses was also treated by invoking soft Cu layers with optimum film layer thickness. Such multilayered amorphous/crystalline samples exhibit superplastic-like homogeneous deformation at room temperature. It is found that the deformability of the resultant micropillars depends on the thickness of Cu layers. Microstructural observations and theoretical analysis suggest that the superplastic-like deformation mode is attributed to homogeneous co-deformation of amorphous ZrCu and nanocrystalline Cu layers because the 100 nm-thick Cu layers can provide compatible flow stress and ¡§plastic zone¡¨ size well matched with those of ZrCu amorphous layers. Besides, we also made attempts to investigate the critical sample size below which shear band localization would disappear and the sample can deform homogeneously. In situ TEM compression was conducted on amorphous ZrCu nanopillars to study shear band formation behavior. The nanopillar is 140 nm in diameter and with a taper angle of 3¢X. Experimental observations and simulations based on a free-volume model both demonstrate that the deformation was localized near the top of the tapered metallic glass pillar. Eventually, the interface nature of metallic glass amorphous/crystalline was characterized through evaluating its energy and validated by the mechanical response of micropillar with ~45o inclined interface under compression. The calculated results showed that the ZrCu/Zr interface energy resides several joules per meter square, meaning that the Zr/ZrCu interface is inherently strong. The high strong adhesion ability of ZrCu/Zr interface was further confirmed by shear fracture happening rightly within the Zr layers rather than along the interface when compressing the ZrCu/Zr micropillars with 45o inclined interface.