Tuning the performance of bulk metallic glasses by milling artificial holes.

The mechanical performance of materials is greatly affected and could be tuned by artificial defects, especially for amorphous alloys. In present work, specially designed holes are created for bulk metallic glass and apparent mechanical performance improvement is obtained when compared with the intact ones. The fracture characterization discovers that the inner wall of the artificial hole has a blocking effect to shear bands (SBs), leading to an apparent enhancement of mechanical property. Our results demonstrate that the blocking effect of SBs induced by the designing artificial hole may provide some new sights on the plastic deformation mechanism of metallic glasses rather than the improved plasticity itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]