Plastic deformation energy of bulk metallic glasses

We develop a new method to characterize the plastic deformation energy (PDE) of bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) using depth-sensitive nanoindentation. In this work, six BMGs with different ductility were investigated by measuring their PDE of the first pop-in events during loading. The PDEs of these BMGs are found to be closely correlated to their ductility. The ductile BMGs have smaller PDE values whereas the brittle BMGs have larger values.