Study of thermal and mechanical stability of metallic glasses using synchrotron radiation

Compared with crystalline counterparts, metallic glasses (MGs) have some superior properties, such as high yield strength, hardness, large elastic limit, high fracture toughness and corrosion resistance, and hence are considered as promising engineering materials. X-ray diffraction (XRD) using high-energy photons has proven to be well suited for describing the structure of highly disordered systems such as MGs. Time-resolved in situ XRD experiments may nowadays be performed at high-brilliance synchrotron radiation sources for a variety of conditions which help to elucidate the structure–property relations. It has been recently demonstrated that the high energy X-ray diffraction represents very powerful tool to track tiny structural changes in the structure of metallic glasses when exposed to thermal or mechanical load. The first part of this contribution presents results showing how high-energy XRD can be used for tracking the thermal expansion behavior of Pd-based and Fe-based metallic glasses.The second part presents a new type of flash annealing treatment and discusses its potential in tailoring of mechanical properties of MGs.