Glassy alloys (metallic glasses) are currently the focus of intense research in the international metals community. Setting aside elevated-temperature applications, these amorphous metals have exciting potential for structural applications. When metallic glasses were first widely studied in the 1960s, the alloy compositions then known to be quenchable into the glassy state from the liquid required high cooling rates on the order of 106 K s−1 and were consequently restricted to thin sections. The current interest in metallic glasses has its origin mainly in the increasing range of compositions that can now be cast into glasses at much lower cooling rates, permitting minimum sections of 1 mm to 1 cm or even larger. These bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) are the focus of the articles in this issue of MRS Bulletin. Our goal is to illustrate the major materials issues for BMGs, from processing to structures to properties and from the fundamental science of glasses to viable industrial applications. We hope that the articles, in providing a snapshot of a rapidly moving field, show why BMGs are attracting such intense interest and serve to highlight some challenging issues awaiting resolution.

Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) are multicomponent alloys with typically three to five components with large atomic size mismatch and a composition close to a deep eutectic. Packing in BMG liquids is very dense, with a low content of free volume resulting in viscosities that are several orders of magnitude higher than in pure metal melts. The dense packing accomplished by structural and chemical atomic ordering also brings the BMG-forming liquid energetically and entropically closer to its corresponding crystalline state. These factors lead to slow crystallization kinetics and consequentially to high glass-forming ability. This article highlights the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of BMGs and their contributions to extraordinarily high glass-forming ability. Some possible links with mechanical properties are also suggested.

A great expansion in the number of alloy compositions known to give bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) has occurred in recent years. This progress is reviewed, and factors contributing to glass-forming ability are discussed. Practical strategies for pinpointing compositions with optimum glass-forming ability are presented, with examples of their use. Consideration is also given to the wide range of possibilities for BMG-based composites.

A recent structural model reconciles apparently conflicting features of randomness, short-range order, and medium-range order that coexist in metallic glasses. In this efficient cluster packing model, short-range order can be described by efficiently packed solute-centered clusters, producing more than a dozen established atomic clusters, including icosahedra. The observed preference for icosahedral short-range order in metallic glasses is consistent with the theme of efficient atomic packing and is further favored by solvent-centered clusters. Driven by solute—solute avoidance, medium-range order results from the organization in space of overlapping, percolating (via connected pathways), quasi-equivalent clusters. Cubic-like and icosahedral-like organization of these clusters are consistent with measured medium-range order. New techniques such as fluctuation electron microscopy now provide more detailed experimental studies of medium-range order for comparison with model predictions. Microscopic free volume in the efficient cluster packing model is able to represent experimental and computational results, showing free volume complexes ranging from subatomic to atomic-level sizes. Free volume connects static structural models to dynamic processes such as diffusion and deformation. New approaches dealing with “free” and “anti-free” microscopic volume and coordinated atomic motion show promise for modeling the complex dynamics of structural relaxations such as the glass transition. Future work unifying static and dynamic structural views is suggested.

In the absence of dislocation-mediated crystallographic slip, room-temperature deformation in metallic glasses occurs in thin shear bands initially only ∼10 nm thick. A sharp drop in viscosity (shear softening) occurs in deformed glassy matter and facilitates additional flow in existing shear bands. This further localization of plastic flow leads to shearing-off failure without any significant macroscopic plasticity.

However, whereas most bulk metallic glasses fail in this manner, some undergo surprisingly extensive plastic deformation (in some cases, up to 50% or more) in compression or bending. When this occurs, the flow is “jerky,” as indicated by serrated stress–strain curves. Each serration may correspond to the emission of a shear band that then ceases to operate, at least temporarily, despite the predicted shear softening. As elastic energy is converted to heat during shear, temperatures rise sharply at or near shear bands. This heating may lead to the growth of nanocrystals that then block propagation of shear bands and cracks. The understanding of the dependence of mechanical response of metallic glasses on intrinsic (elastic constants, chemistry) and extrinsic factors (shapes, flaws) is the subject of intense current interest.

This article reviews the state of the art in the field of porous amorphous metals by describing current processing techniques, mechanical properties, and potential applications. In addition to the reduction in density, the main benefit of introducing porosity in amorphous metals is the improvement in compressive ductility and energy absorption. This ductilizing effect is explained by: (1) shear-band interruption by individual pores at low porosities and (2) stable plastic bending of thin struts at higher porosities, with cellular amorphous metals displaying compressive ductilities of up to 80%.

In the potential energy landscape theory of liquids, the energetic configurational landscape of a liquid is modeled using a potential energy function comprising a population of stable potential energy minima called inherent states, which represent the stable atomic configurations of the liquid. These configurations are separated by saddle points that represent barriers for configurational hopping between the inherent states. In this article, we survey recent progress in understanding metallic glass-forming liquids from a potential energy landscape perspective. Flow is modeled as activated hopping between inherent states across energy barriers that are assumed to be, on average, sinusoidal. This treatment gives rise to a functional relation between viscosity and isoconfigurational shear modulus, leading to rheological laws describing the Newtonian and non-Newtonian viscosity of metallic glass-forming liquids over a broad range of rheological behavior. High-frequency ultrasonic data gathered within the supercooled-liquid region are shown to correlate well with rheological data, thus confirming the validity of the proposed treatment. Variations in shear modulus induced either by thermal excitation or mechanical deformation can be correlated to variations in the measured stored enthalpy or equivalently to the configurational potential energy of the liquid. This shows that the elastic and rheological properties of a liquid or glass are uniquely related to the average potential energy of the occupied inherent states.

Since 1988, it has been demonstrated that metallic glasses can be made in bulk form with diameters larger than several millimeters. At present, several alloy systems with maximum diameters for glass formation exceeding 1 cm are known. As a result, Zr-, Ti-, Fe-, Co-, Ni-, and Cu-based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) are already in use for magnetic-sensing, chemical, and structural applications. In this article, recently developed BMGs with critical diameters of more than 1 cm are summarized, and some of their industrial applications are reviewed.