Metallic glasses are a unique class
of materials combining ultrahigh
strength together with plastic-like processing ability. However, the
currently used melt quenching route to obtain amorphous alloys has
a high cost basis in terms of manufacturing and expensive constituent
elements often necessary to achieve the glassy state, thus hindering
widespread adoption. In contrast, multimaterial electrodeposition
offers a low-cost and versatile alternative to obtain amorphous alloys.
Here, we demonstrate multiscale manufacturing of a model binary amorphous
system by a facile and scalable pulsed electrodeposition approach.
The structural and mechanical characteristics of electrodeposited
Ni–P metallic glasses are investigated by a combination of
experiments and molecular dynamics simulations. The property dependence
on slight change in alloy chemistry is explained by the fraction of
short-range-order clusters and geometrically unfavorable motifs. Bicapped
square antiprism polyhedra clusters with two-atom connections result
in more homogeneous deformation for Ni90P10 metallic
glass, whereas a relatively higher fraction of three-atom connections
in Ni85P15 metallic glass leads to higher strength,
albeit localized and relatively brittle failure. The practicality
of our approach is likely to stimulate the use of amorphous alloys
in simple chemistries for multiscale use with systematic property
optimization for specific applications.
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