New member of the glass family - metallic glass

The characteristics of glassy materials are different from crystal materials with neatly arranged atoms, as these materials have long-range disordered and short-range ordered atomic structures. Not only are water bottles and windows made of glass materials. Common materials such as candles, rubber, and optical fibers also belong to glassy materials.

Schematic diagram of atomic structure of crystal and glass, with the left image showing the crystal and the right image showing the glass

The disorder of glass structure nurtures infinite possibilities, and glassy materials possess a series of valuable characteristics such as isotropy, metastability, high strength, high elasticity, corrosion resistance, wear resistance, etc. It is precisely the existence of these good characteristics that make it widely used not only in construction, automobiles, household goods, but also as a key material in cutting-edge fields such as information communication and aerospace.

Metal materials that can be seen everywhere in daily life can also be made into glassy materials, which are metallic glasses, also known as amorphous alloys.

Different forms of amorphous alloys

Metal glass materials are obtained by rapidly cooling high-temperature metal melts that have not yet crystallized, such as Fe based alloys, Co based alloys, Fe Ni alloys, etc., through a spinning method. Its microstructure is not like that of common metals, where atoms are arranged neatly, but like glass, where atoms are arranged in a chaotic and disordered manner. This special structure endows it with many unique properties, such as excellent soft magnetic properties, mechanical properties, chemical properties, etc., which have been applied in various fields such as power electronics, information communication, transportation, energy, etc.

Due to the high saturation magnetic induction intensity, high magnetic permeability, and low coercivity of metallic glass, electronic components made from it have smaller and lighter structures with less loss, which is of great significance for achieving energy conservation and emission reduction.

Compared to traditional materials, the use of metallic glass in distribution transformers can reduce no-load losses by 70-80%. Not only that, metallic glass can also be made into iron cores and applied to high-speed motors. Especially in mid to high frequency applications, the core loss of traditional silicon steel motors increases sharply. By replacing it with metallic glass, the operating efficiency of the motor can generally be improved to over 95%, and even up to 98%, with obvious energy-saving advantages.

Electronic Component

Application Field of Metallic Glass - Distribution Transformers

Wireless charging for electric vehicles

It is precisely because of the various wonderful properties of metallic glass that the "eighteen martial arts" displayed by this magical material far exceed our imagination and have a wide range of applications.

Metallic glass has high strength, such as cobalt based bulk metallic glass, which has a fracture strength of up to 6.0 GPa, and iron-based metallic glass, which can reach a fracture strength of 3.6 GPa, several times that of general structural steel.

Metallic glass has high elasticity, and its elastic limit is several to tens of times that of general crystal alloys. For example, using zirconium based metallic glass to make the hitting head of a golf club can transfer nearly 99% of energy to the ball, and its hitting distance is 1.3 times farther than that of a regular club. The high elasticity of metallic glass can also be utilized to produce various space application components, such as harmonic gears used as joint reducers for spacecraft robotic arms and elastic porous metal rubber for shock absorption.

Metallic glass is a functional material that can be used for cleaning water pollution, energy storage, and hydrogen evolution, providing new ideas for solving environmental pollution and energy storage problems. For example, metal glasses such as iron-based, magnesium based, and aluminum based can degrade azo dye solutions, and their fading rate is tens or even thousands of times that of corresponding crystalline alloys. Metallic glass can be prepared into nano porous composite structures through dealloying, which greatly improves the transport characteristics of ions and electrons, ultimately increasing the specific capacitance. This high energy storage density nano porous material is expected to be applied as an electrode for flexible self-supporting supercapacitors. Metallic glass has high hydrogen evolution catalytic activity and is an ideal independent catalytic electrode.

The emergence of metallic glass has a transformative significance for the field of human materials science, and in the future it will continue to shine in areas such as energy, life and health, national defense and military industry. Although the road is endless and faraway, I still want to pursue the truth in the world. Only unremitting struggle is the inexhaustible driving force and long-term hope for the continuous development of new materials in China!