Anomalous temperature dependence of elastic limit in metallic glasses

YF Wang and J Liu and JZ Jiang and W Cai, NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 15, 171 (2024).

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-44048-7

Understanding the atomistic mechanisms of inelastic deformation in metallic glasses (MGs) remains challenging due to their amorphous structure, where local carriers of plasticity cannot be easily defined. Using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we analyzed the onset of inelastic deformation in CuZr MGs, specifically the temperature dependence of the elastic limit, in terms of localized shear transformation (ST) events. We find that although the ST events initiate at lower strain with increasing temperature, the elastic limit increases with temperature in certain temperature ranges. We explain this anomalous behavior through the framework of an energy-strain landscape (ESL) constructed from high-throughput strain-dependent energy barrier calculations for the ST events identified in the MD simulations. The ESL reveals that the anomalous behavior is caused by the transition of ST events from irreversible to reversible with increasing temperature. An analytical formulation is developed to predict this transition and the temperature dependence of the elastic limit. It is still challenging to study the atomistic mechanism of inelastic deformation in metallic glasses owing to their amorphous structure. Here, the authors report an anomalous temperature dependence of the onset of plasticity in metallic glasses at low temperature.

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