Metallic glasses due to their unique combination of physical and chemical properties have a great potential in various applications: materials for construction, medical, MEMs devices and so on. The deformation mechanism in metallic glasses is very much different from that in conventional crystalline materials and not yet fully understood. Here we are trying to find out what drives shear deformation in metallic glasses. The compression experiments of the bulk metallic glassy (BMG) samples coated with tin, Rose metal and indium were performed. There were no melting sites of the coating observed near individual shear bands. Melting occurred only near fracture surface, near microcracks and in the places of shear band concentrations. The results indicate that shear banding is rather a stress driven process while the temperature rise that was observed takes place due to friction forces in the viscous supercooled liquid thin layer in the shear bands.

Zr-Pd metallic glassy thin films with a hierarchical nano-scale structure, produced by magnetron sputtering of the Zr and Pd powder mixture, demonstrate a unique combination of physical and biochemical properties. Thermal stability of the nano-structured glassy samples, their resistance to oxidation in dry air and phase transformation behavior are discussed in the present work. These binary alloy samples also show exceptionally high corrosion resistance and spontaneous passivation in a simulated body fluid. Experiments on the catalytic activity and biocompatibility of this nanostructured metallic glass indicate that this is a very suitable material for biochemical applications. Compared to the multicomponent alloys studied earlier this binary alloy has much simpler chemical composition, which makes preparation of the sample with defined stoichiometry easier, especially when the elements have different sputtering rates.