Towards commonality between shear banding and glass-liquid transition in metallic glasses

ZY Yang and LH Dai, PHYSICAL REVIEW MATERIALS, 6, L100602 (2022).

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.6.L100602

Despite the high attendance of shear banding in metallic glasses and other disordered materials, the nature of the emergence of shear band is still mysterious. Using molecular dynamics simulations, a set of detailed characterizations of shear band in a typical Cu50Zr50 metallic glass is obtained. Then we uncover a large number of robust and intriguing commonalities between the emergence of shear bands and the glass-to-liquid transition, including strong similarities on viscosity drop, enthalpy discontinuity, breakdown of hard backbone network, as well as relaxation process. Such observations indicate that shear banding in metallic glasses is a consequence of deformation-controlled glass transition, as further quantitatively validated via the compelling overlap between the venerable Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann law (and Adam-Gibbs relation) and the evolving glass state of shear band controlled by configurational temperature. These results provide a direct bridge between shear banding and glass-to-liquid transition and are instrumental to build the unified framework of flow behavior induced either by thermal or stressed stimuli in disordered materials.

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