Metallic Glass Team

The team is located in the Division of Structural and Functional Materials. Its members prepare metallic glasses (MGs) in the form of ribbons (15-50 μm) as well as rods and plates (1-20 mm) and also study their structure and properties. The team has been accumulating extensive experience for over 50 years, being the first in Eastern Europe to undertake and explore this topic.

Magnetic MGs are applied in magnetic cores production and flexible magnetic screens and magnetoelastic transducers. MGs are used for the production of nanocrystalline materials with very good soft magnetic properties (Fe alloys) or mechanical properties (Al alloys). MGs have a unique set of properties: they are mechanically hard and magnetically soft, they show high resistivity and good corrosion resistance.
 

The team is experienced in unconventional nanocrystallisation methods (high and low temperatures). At elevated temperature, bulk metallic glasses are superplastic and mouldable like polymers. They are a perfect material for hard and mirror smooth elements with a complex shape for micromechanics, e.g. micro-gears with a sub-millimeter diameter.
  

Services offered

  • production of:
    • various alloys at a laboratory scale
    • amorphous and nanocrystalline alloys in the form of thin ribbons
    • bulk metallic glasses (rods or plates)
    • plasma modification of bulk metallic glass surfaces
    • crystallisation process of metallic glass
    • research into:
      • glass forming ability using thermal methods (DSC, DTA) and casting methods (continuous and discrete methods)
      • structure and microstructure
      • thermal stability and crystallisation kinetics
      • mechanical properties
      • magnetic properties
         

Research infrastructure

  • Heat 300 electric arc furnace for the preparation of alloys
  • Edmund Bühler GmbH melting device for induction melting, melt spinning and injection mould casting
  • Rigaku Mini Flex II X-ray diffractometer
  • Perkin Elmer DSC 7 differential scanning calorimeter (up to 1000 K)
  • Perkin Elmer DSC 8000 differential scanning calorimeter (from 120 up to 1000 K)
  • DTA/DSC LabSys Setaram calorimeter (up to 1800 K)
  • Zeiss AxioVert 40 Mat light microscope
  • Keyence VHX-7000 digital light microscope
  • Various furnaces for the thermal treatment of alloys
  • Hardness testers
  • High-sensitivity computerised hysteresis loop tracer for measuring quasistatic magnetic hysteresis loop of ribbons, plates, wires, rods and toroids
     

Selected projects

  • Cone test as a glass forming ability determination method of metallic glass-forming alloys (NCN, OPUS 9, 2016–2019)
  • Development of high-performance and waste-free technology for the production of soft magnetic nanocomposites for high-frequency processing of high powers (NCBR, TECHMATSTRATEG I, 2018–2021)
  • Modification of structure and properties of bulk metallic glasses in low-temperature plasma (NCN, OPUS 15, 2019–2022)
     

Patents

  • A method of producing magnetically soft metallic glass (Polish Patent No. 146 424, 1989)
  • Amorphous metal alloy (Polish Patent No. 151 347, 1991)
  • Amorphous metal alloy (Polish Patent No. 154 378, 1992)