Condensed-Matter Physics & Materials Science Seminar

The crystallization behaviour of metallic glass (MG) has long been investigated ever since the discovery of these important functional materials [1]. Compared with crystalline and amorphous extremes, mate-rials containing crystalline precipitates within an otherwise amorphous MG or partially crystallized ma-terials have distinct properties that could be a way of tuning the materials' characteristics. Several methods including powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and se-lected area electron diffraction (SAED) are usually combined to characterize the degree of crystalline structure in amorphous materials. Until now, these methods, however, have failed to show the crystal-lization of individual crystal grains in three dimensions. In this work, the in-situ Bragg coherent X-ray diffraction imaging (BCDI) [2, 3] reveals the grain growth and the strain variation of individual crystals up to the sizes of a few hundred nanometers from the pure Fe-based MG powder during heating. We have found that there is preferential growth along one direction during the crystal formation; there is fractal structure around the developing crystal surface; there is also strain relaxation within the growing crystals while cooling. The work supports a two-step crystallization model for the Fe-based MG during heating. This could help to pave the way for designing partially crystalline materials with their at-tendant soft magnetic, anti-corrosive and mechanical properties. References [1] D. H. Kim, W. T. Kim, E. S. Park, N. Mattern, and J. Eckert, Prog. Mater. Sci. 2013, 58, 1103. [2] M. A. Pfeifer, G. J. Williams, I. A. Vartanyants, R. Harder and I. K. Robinson, Nature 2006, 442, 63. [3] I. K. Robinson and R. Harder, Nat. Mater. 2009, 8, 291.