Isomechanical groups in bulk metallic glasses

Isomechanical groups are, as defined by Frost and Ashby [H.J. Frost and M.F. Ashby, Deformation-Mechanism Maps, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1982], separate classes of materials that exhibit similar deformation and transport properties when normalised by an appropriate parameter. Fundamentally, this separation results from significant differences in material structure and bonding. Here, such an analysis is applied to 40 bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) grouped into three classes according to their Poisson's ratio, which is known to be an indicator of intrinsic toughness. Through rigorous statistical analysis, it is found that isomechanical groups are present and that they may result from (1) variation in the tendency for directional bonding, and (2) how liquid-like the structure is, which may be characterised by a quantification of local volumetric strain. These results suggest that, although experimentally observed properties from BMGs in different isomechanical groups are all typically considered within the same framework, differences in atomic packing and inter-atomic bonding mean that they should in fact be treated separately. These fundamental differences in bonding and structure may explain the known large variation in the tendency for toughness and plasticity in BMGs.