Metallic Glassy Hollow Microfibers

Abstract

Hollow microfibers can be fabricated by using different materials such as metals and glass. The inner diameter of strong, tough, and conductive metallic tubes is on a submillimeter scale while that of quartz glass tubes made by thermoplastic forming can reach 5 nm. However, quartz glass tubes are brittle and nonconductive. Metallic glasses (MGs) are strong, tough, conductive, and have a thermoplastic forming ability. Theoretically, such materials can be used to produce strong, tough, and conductive hollow microfibers. Here, we report a method to fabricate MG hollow microfibers via thermoplastic forming bulk Pd43Cu27Ni10P20 MG tubes in their supercooled-liquid region. Uniform and smooth MG hollow microfibers with single and multiple channels were successfully fabricated by this method. Investigation of the heterogeneous microstructure of the fibers revealed their forming mechanism. The hollow microfibers might attract scientific interest and may have engineering applications in areas such as electrochemistry, microelectromechanical devices, medicine, and biology.