Ultrahigh strength binary Ni–Nb bulk glassy alloy composite with good ductility

Materials may be strong or ductile, but rarely both at once. However, the combination of high strength and good ductility is significant for application of materials as structural materials. In this work, we report a Ni–Nb alloy, which exhibits ultrahigh compressive strength of up to 3500 MPa together with good compressive ductility of 5.3%. To the best of our knowledge, the plastic strain is larger than previous values reported for any bulk ultrahigh strength (over 3000 MPa) alloys. The good ductility is due to the heterogeneous microstructure of the alloy.