An electronic criterion for assessing intrinsic brittleness of metallic glasses
Abstract
Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) are characterized by a number of remarkable physical and mechanical properties. Unfortunately, these same materials are often intrinsically brittle, which limits their utility. Consequently, considerable effort has been expended searching for correlations between the phenomenologically complex mechanical properties of metallic glasses and more basic properties, such correlations might provide insight into the structure and bonding controlling the deformation properties of BMGs. While conducting such a search, we uncovered a weak correlation between a BMG’s work function and its susceptibility to brittle behavior. We argue that the basis for this correlation is a consequence of a component of the work function – the surface dipole – and a fundamental bond property related to the shape of the charge density at a bond critical point. Together these observations suggest that simple first principle calculations might be useful in the search for tougher BMGs.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jul 09, 2014
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.4884783
Entities
People
- M. E. Eberhart
- S. Halas
- T. Durakiewicz
- T. E. Jones
- X. F. Wang
- Yipeng Wu
- Zheyu Lu
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- Colorado School of Mines
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Maria Curie-Skłodowska University
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province
- Office of Naval Research
- University of Science and Technology Beijing
- University of Sydney
- Xiangtan University