No abstract

In this article, we provide a perspective overview of the iconic properties, recent application-oriented research, and future commercialization opportunities of thin film metallic glasses (TFMGs). A brief review on the preparation and fundamental properties of TFMGs will be given first. TFMGs possess attractive properties such as corrosion resistance, extremely low roughness, and antibacterial characteristics, which give rise to various applications in biomedical devices, sensors, and tribology. Therefore, a number of our representative works will be reviewed to showcase the benefits of TFMGs over traditional materials and processing in these applications. In addition, new perspectives in the research and development of TFMGs and opportunities for commercialization will also be highlighted.

Elastic moduli, E, of free-standing polystyrene (PS) single-layers and polystyrene–polydimethylsiloxane (PS-PDMS) bilayers are measured by uniaxial tensile testing at room temperature under different strain rates, γ̇, and for PS thicknesses, h, from 8 to 130 nm. As γ̇ increases, E increases initially, then approaches the bulk value, E bulk, when γ̇ exceeds a characteristic value (≡ τ–1) that decreases with increasing h. The noted variation of E with γ̇ shows that stress relaxation occurs in the films during measurement when γ̇τ ≪ 1, while the noted variation of τ–1 with h shows that thinner films relax faster. Consequently, E decreases with decreasing h if γ̇ is small, but displays independence of h if γ̇ is large. Visually, the crossover takes place at around γ̇ = 0.0015 s–1, where at γ̇τ > 1 for all films.