Degradable Sr-based bulk metallic glasses

We report a family of Sr-based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) with good glass-forming ability and many unique properties, such as ultralow glass transition temperature T-g, elastic moduli and less fragility than known BMGs. The T-g of Sr60Li11Mg9Zn20 BMG is at room temperature (similar to 299 K). Remarkably, the BMGs have tunable degradation behavior in water and the corrosion rate can be controlled by simply minor alloying, so that the full degradation time can be effectively modulated from minutes to more than weeks. (C) 2009 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.