Formation and properties of new heavy rare-earth-based bulk metallic glasses

A series of new families of heavy rare-earth (RE) based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) with excellent glass-forming ability and high thermal stability have been obtained by a copper mold casting method. Compared with the light RE-based BMGs, the heavy RE-based BMGs have much higher glass transition and crystallization temperatures and higher elastic moduli. It is found that the thermal stability is closely correlated with the elastic constants in the RE-based BMGs. The correlations found are useful for guiding BMG-forming alloy design to enhance stability.