Viscous flow and viscosity measurement of low-temperature imprintable AuCuSi thin film metallic glasses investigated by nanoindentation creep

Publication date: 5 June 2017
Source:Materials & Design, Volume 123
Author(s): Cheng Wang, Yi-Chia Liao, Jinn P. Chu, Chun-Hway Hsueh
The viscous flow typically plays an important role for the deformation of metallic glasses in the supercooled liquid region. This deformation behavior has been widely investigated for bulk metallic glasses. However, studies on the viscous flow and viscosity measurement of thin film metallic glasses (TFMGs) were sparse. In this work, we synthesized four compositions of fully amorphous AuCuSi TFMGs by magnetron sputtering. The glass transition temperature, which is also the temperature of the critical transition point from elastic/plastic deformation to time-dependent viscous flow, was determined using nanoindentation. The nanoindentation creep tests performed with hemispherical and Berkovich indenter tips in the temperature range of 50 to 170°C were proven to be suitable for the viscosity measurements of AuCuSi TFMGs. The activation energy of the flow process was also evaluated from the indentation results and good agreement was obtained between the results evaluated from hemispherical and Berkovich tips. Finally, a nano-scaled imprinted AuCuSi TFMG showed great topological resolution.

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