Elastic Fluctuations and Structural Heterogeneities in Metallic Glasses

Suppressing crystallization of a metallic melt results in a disordered solid, also known as a metallic glass. One may conclude that a metallic glass is free of defined structural length scales beyond some atomic-scale value that characterizes short- and medium-range order. While it is well known from atomistic modeling that a metallic glass is structurally heterogeneous, heterogeneities at such a small length scale can hardly be resolved in experiments. This review highlights experimental insights into elastic fluctuations and structural heterogeneities that emerge at scales between a few nanometers and tens to hundreds of micrometers. It distinguishes between structural and property fluctuations in as-cast metallic glasses, and heterogeneities introduced by elastic and inhomogeneous plastic deformation. As-cast glasses reveal elastic fluctuations across 3 orders of magnitude, suggesting a hierarchy of length scales that can be tuned by thermomechanical processing. Similarly, nanoscale strain localization into shear bands drives the formation of structural and elastic heterogeneities at both the nano- and the microscale. It is proposed that both types of fluctuations will allow one to quantitatively define structure-property relationships via measurable length scalesan approach that has largely contributed to the engineering success of crystalline metals.