Fe-based amorphous coatings: Structures and properties

• The amorphous coatings show excellent corrosion resistance and unusual pitting mechanisms in NaCl solution.
• The amorphous coatings exhibit an oxidative and delamination wear mechanism.
• The bonding strength of the coatings was 25–45 MPa in this work.
• Highly hydrophobic coating can be directly fabricated via the surface roughness control.
• The amorphous coating has potential applications in the military and industry.

Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs), also called amorphous alloys, have totally different structure from the conventional crystalline metals and are well-known for their high strength and high hardness, large elastic limits, and, in particular, for their outstanding corrosion and wear resistance. During the past several decades, despite the understanding gained on the formation and microstructure, as well as the mechanisms related to their unique mechanical properties that have achieved great progress, industrial applications of BMGs are still very scant due to mostly the poor ductility at room temperature. In contrast, amorphous coatings based on BMG systems have received increasing attention and interest in recent years because of the combination of the excellent properties inherited from the bulk glassy alloys and the potential engineering applications for amorphous coatings. In this article, we briefly summarize the past development and the recent progress of amorphous coatings made in our group in terms of fabrication, microstructure, thermal stability, and properties such as corrosion and wear resistance, bonding strength and wettability. In addition, we also describe simply the foreseen potential applications and future developments of this kind of materials.