The fabrication and property evaluation of Zr-Ti-B-Si thin film metallic glass materials

Recently, the thin film metallic glass materials have attracted much attention due to their amorphous structure and unique properties. In this work, four Zr-Ti-B-Si thin film metal glasses (TFMGs) were fabricated on Si wafer and AISI 420 stainless steel disk substrates using four pure targets by a co-sputtering system. The power of Si target was adjusted to achieve TFMGs with different Si contents. The amorphous phase of TFMG was determined by X-ray diffractometer (XRD) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM). When the Si content was higher than 12.9 at.%, the dense and featureless microstructures of thin films were produced. Very high hardness, beyond 10 GPa, was obtained for Zr-Ti-B-Si TFMG containing high Si content. The excellence in corrosion resistance of Zr-Ti-B-Si TFMGs was confirmed by the potentiodynamic polarization test in 5.0 wt.% NaCl aqueous solution. It can be concluded that the Si content showed a positive influence on the hardness, adhesion and anti-corrosion performance of the Zr-Ti-B-Si thin film metallic glass. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.