Editor's Summary

28 February 2008

A perfect match

Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) are a new class of engineering materials attracting significant technological interest. Many of these metals exhibit high strength and resist fracture, but they tend to lack tensile ductility and fail in an apparently brittle manner under a mechanical load. BMG–matrix composites, in which isolated dendrites stabilize the glass against catastrophic failure, overcome some of these weaknesses. Hofmann et al. take this approach a stage further by producing 'designed composites' with optimized mechanical properties by the matching of key fundamental mechanical and microstructural length scales. The resulting titanium–zirconium-based composites demonstrate high ductility and fracture toughness comparable with the toughest titanium and steel alloys.

Letter: Designing metallic glass matrix composites with high toughness and tensile ductility

Douglas C. Hofmann, Jin-Yoo Suh, Aaron Wiest, Gang Duan, Mary-Laura Lind, Marios D. Demetriou & William L. Johnson

doi:10.1038/nature06598

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