Localized shear deformation and softening of bulk metallic glass: stress or temperature driven?

Metallic glasses due to their unique combination of physical and chemical properties have a great potential in various applications: materials for construction, medical, MEMs devices and so on. The deformation mechanism in metallic glasses is very much different from that in conventional crystalline materials and not yet fully understood. Here we are trying to find out what drives shear deformation in metallic glasses. The compression experiments of the bulk metallic glassy (BMG) samples coated with tin, Rose metal and indium were performed. There were no melting sites of the coating observed near individual shear bands. Melting occurred only near fracture surface, near microcracks and in the places of shear band concentrations. The results indicate that shear banding is rather a stress driven process while the temperature rise that was observed takes place due to friction forces in the viscous supercooled liquid thin layer in the shear bands.