High-temperature malleable Ta-Co metallic glass developed by combinatorial method

Development of metallic thin films with comprehensive properties fulfilling the needs of modern Micro/Nano Electro Mechanical Systems (M/NEMS) devices remains challenging. Here, a fully amorphous Ta90Co10 is screened out by combinatorial sputtering and atomic manufacturing technique, and the Ta90Co10 thin film metallic glass exhibits simultaneously a super-high crystallization temperature of 1325 K, a high hardness of 16.3 GPa, a high strength of 5000 MPa, and a large plastic strain exceeding 50%, outperforming all existing thin film materials. The excellent properties can be attributed to the atomic-scale structural heterogeneity induced by formation of different configurations in amorphous structure. The present work provides an approach to develop new M/NEMS-based thin film materials with outstanding comprehensive properties.