Roles of ion irradiation and thermal annealing in inducing crystallization in metallic glass

Abstract We studied the crystallization behavior of metallic glass Ni50Nb10Zr15Ti15Pt7.5Cu2.5 under different ion irradiation and thermal annealing conditions. The results show that although the room temperature ion irradiation would not introduce observable structural defects in metallic glass, the excess free volume induced by ion irradiation would promote the formation of nanocrystals under thermal annealing. Meanwhile, the interstitial atoms induced by high temperature ion irradiation may act as an important role in the enhancement of atomic diffusivity and nanocrystals growth process. Our study shows that the combination of ion irradiation and thermal annealing may help to achieve controllable structural modification of metallic glass.