Enhancement of glass-forming ability and mechanical behavior of zirconium-lanthanide two-phase bulk metallic glasses

Development of the two-phase bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) is essentially retarded due to difficulties in finding of phase-separated (immiscible) alloys with high glass-forming ability (GFA) of coexistent phases. Referring to the concept of solute partitioning and minimization of free energy, in this work we present an idea that a metallic liquid system containing two liquids with individual self-assembled eutectic composition may yield two-phase BMGs upon casting. The formation of the two-glass structure is discussed and a strategy of partial substitution of chemically similar elements for overcoming the drawback of low GFA is proposed. A family of two-phase zirconium-lanthanide based metallic glasses in bulk form is developed. The mechanical behavior of the two-phase BMGs with different ratio of zirconium-rich to lanthanide-rich glassy phase is studied for the first time. This work provides a new concept for fabrication of two-phase BMGs and reveals the role of constituent phases in determining the mechanical properties of the whole glass.