Plastic deformation behavior of Fe-Co-B-Si-Nb-Cr bulk metallic glasses under nanoindentation

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the effect of Cr addition on thermal properties and indentation behavior of Fe52Co20-xB20Si4Nb4Crx alloys with x = 0, 1, 3 and 5 at.%, respectively. Among all studied alloys, the Fe52Co17B20Si4Nb4Cr3 bulk metallic glass (BMG) exhibits the highest thermal stability with large supercooled liquid region of 40 K and the pronounced plastic deformation features which is serrated flow (pop-in event) and significant pile- up of materials around indents. This demonstrates that the appropriate addition of Cr in Fe-based BMG can induce the internal atomic structure modulation and promote the mechanical softening, which are discussed in terms of free volume concept. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.