Stronger than steel or titanium -- and just as tough -- metallic glass is an ideal material for everything from cell-phone cases to aircraft parts. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a new technique that allows them to make metallic-glass parts utilizing the same inexpensive processes used to produce plastic parts. With this new method, they can heat a piece of metallic glass at a rate of a million degrees per second and then mold it into any shape in just a few milliseconds.
Previously, metallic-glass parts were produced by heating the metal alloy above the melting point of the crystalline phase—typically over 1,000 degrees C. Then, the molten metal is cast into a steel mold, where it cools before crystallizing. But problems arise because the steel molds are usually designed to withstand temperatures of only around 600 degrees C. As a result, the molds have to be frequently replaced, making the process rather expensive. Furthermore, at 1,000 degrees C, the liquid is so fluid that it tends to splash and break up, creating parts with flow defects.
If the solid metallic glass is heated to about 500 degrees C, it reaches the same fluidity that liquid plastic needs to have when it's processed. But it takes time for heat to spread through a metallic glass, and by the time the material reaches the proper temperature throughout, it has already crystallized.
So the researchers tried a new strategy: to heat and process the metallic glass extremely quickly. Johnson's team discovered that, if they were fast enough, they could heat the metallic glass to a liquid state that's fluid enough to be injected into a mold and allowed to freeze—all before it could crystallize.
To heat the material uniformly and rapidly, they used a technique called ohmic heating. The researchers fired a short and intense pulse of electrical current to deliver an energy surpassing 1,000 joules in about 1 millisecond—about one megawatt of power—to heat a small rod of the metallic glass.
The current pulse heats the entire rod—which was 4 millimeters in diameter and 2 centimeters long—at a rate of a million degrees per second. "We uniformly heat the glass at least a thousand times faster than anyone has before," Johnson says. Taking only about half a millisecond to reach the right temperature, the now-softened glass could be injected into a mold and cooled—all in milliseconds. To demonstrate the new method, the researchers heated a metallic-glass rod to about 550 degrees C and then shaped it into a toroid in less than 40 milliseconds. Despite being formed in open air, the molded toroid is free of flow defects and oxidation.
In addition, this process allows researchers to study these materials in their molten states, which was never before possible. For example, by heating the material before it can crystallize, researchers can examine the crystallization process itself on millisecond time scales. The new technique, called rapid discharge forming, has been patented and is being developed for commercialization, Johnson says. In 2010, he and his colleagues started a company, Glassimetal Technology, to commercialize novel metallic-glass alloys using this kind of plastic-forming technology.
