The recovery of structural relaxation-induced viscoelastic creep strain in bulk and ribbon Pd40Cu30Ni10P20 glass

The ability of metallic glasses to undergo homogeneous viscous flow is known to decrease strongly as a result of structural relaxation and this effect is commonly considered to be irreversible. The present paper employs creep measurements to show that this ability can be significantly recovered by short-term preannealing in the glass transition region. This technique provides a unique possibility to recover the viscoelastic properties of metallic glasses after these have deteriorated greatly via structural relaxation.