Tensile deformation behaviors and damping properties of small-sized Cu-Zr-Al metallic glasses

Uniaxial tensile tests were performed on micron-sized Cu-Zr-Al metallic glassy wires (MGWs) to investigate the deformation behaviors. It is found that the MGWs exhibit unusual nonlinear deformation behavior with irreversible elongation, and our analysis indicates that this nonlinear deformation is related to the formation of sub-nanometer voids coalesced from flow defects under tensile stress. MGWs at micrometer scale exhibit a lower Young's modulus than that of the bulk. The strong structure relaxation leads to the increase of the modulus when heating up the MGWs. The internal friction shows that the MGWs become a viscous state above glass transition temperature. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.