Ductile metallic glasses in supercooled martensitic alloys

We report ductile bulk metallic glasses based on martensitic alloys. The slowly cooled specimens contain a mixture of parent ‘austenite’ and martensite phase. The slightly faster cooled bulk metallic glasses with 2–5 nm sized ‘austenite’-like crystalline cluster reveal high strength and large ductility (16%). Shear bands propagate in a slither mode in this spatially inhomogeneous glassy structure and undergo considerable ‘thickening’ from 5–25 nm. A ‘stress induced displacive transformation’ is proposed to be responsible for both plasticity and work-hardening-like behavior of these ‘M-Glasses’.