Thermal and Thermomechanical Analysis of Amorphous Metals: A Compact Review

Abstract

Metallic glasses are amorphous metals that are supercooled to a frozen, glassy state and lack long-range order, in contrast to conventional metal structures. The lack of a well-ordered structure largely contributes to the unique properties exhibited by these materials. However, their synthesis and processability are defined and thereby constrained by a plethora of thermal and mechanical parameters. Therefore, their broader utilization in the scientific field and particularly in the related industry is somewhat hindered by the limitations related to preparing them in higher amounts. This may be overcome by changing the approach of metal glass formation to a bottom-up approach by utilizing solid-state plasma techniques, such as spark plasma ablation. Another important aspect of amorphous metals, inherently related to their non-equilibrium metastable nature, is the necessity to understand their thermal transformations, which requires unconventional thermal analysis methods. Therefore, this minute review aims to highlight the most important conceptual parameters behind configuring and performing conventional and advanced thermal analysis techniques. The importance of calorimetry methods (differential and fast scanning calorimetry) for the determination of key thermal properties (critical cooling rate, glass-forming ability, heat capacity, relaxation, and rejuvenation) is underscored. Moreover, the contributions of thermomechanical analysis and in situ temperature-dependent structural analysis are also mentioned. Namely, all of the mentioned temperature-dependent mechanical and structural analyses may give rise to the discovery of new glass systems with low critical cooling rates.