Structure and Atomic Motion in Metallic Glasses at High Pressure

Despite metallic glasses are among the most studied metallic materials, still very little is known on the evolution of their unique structural, dynamical and elastic properties under hydrostatic compression, owing to the difficulty to perform in-situ high pressure experiments.
By combining fast scanning calorimetry with synchrotron high energy X-ray diffraction and X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy measurements, we performed a detailed study of the relation between thermal properties, structure and collective atomic motion in metallic glasses under different in situ and ex-situ high pressure treatments [1-3]. Our results provide new insights on the effect of hydrostatic compression in non-ergodic materials and on the surprising rejuvenation and strain hardening reported in previous studies [4].
In this talk, I will present recent advances in this field and show how hot compressions can be used to irreversible modify the structure of metallic glasses and tune at wish the relaxation state of the material.
[1] A. Cornet et al. J. Synch. Rad. 2024
[2] A. Cornet et al. Acta Mat. 2023
[3] X. Zhang et al. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sc., 2023
[4] J. Pan et al. Nature 2020