Surface tension-driven shape-recovery of micro/nanometer-scale surface features in a Pt57.5Ni5.3Cu14.7P22.5 metallic glass in the supercooled liquid region: A numerical modeling capability

Recent experiments in the literature show that micro/nano-scale features imprinted in a Pt-based metallic glass, Pt_57.5Ni_5.3Cu_14.7P_22.5, using thermoplastic forming at a temperature above its glass transition temperature, may be erased by subsequent annealing at a slightly higher temperature in the supercooled liquid region (Kumar and Schroers, 2008). The mechanism of shape-recovery is believed to be surface tension-driven viscous flow of the metallic glass. We have developed an elastic-viscoplastic constitutive theory for metallic glasses in the supercooled liquid temperature range at low strain rates, and we have used existing experimental data in the literature for Pt_57.5Ni_5.3Cu_14.7P_22.5 (Harmon et al., 2007) to estimate the material parameters appearing in our constitutive equations. We have implemented our constitutive model for the bulk response of the glass in a finite element program, and we have also developed a numerical scheme for calculating surface curvatures and incorporating surface tension effects in finite element simulations. By carrying out full three-dimensional finite-element simulations of the shape-recovery experiments of Kumar and Schroers (2008), and using the independently determined material parameters for the bulk glass, we estimate the surface tension of Pt_57.5Ni_5.3Cu_14.7P_22.5 at the temperature at which the shape-recovery experiments were conducted. Finally, with the material parameters for the underlying elastic-viscoplastic bulk response as well as a value for the surface tension of the Pt-based metallic glass fixed, we validate our simulation capability by comparing predictions from our numerical simulations of shape-recovery experiments of Berkovich nanoindents, against corresponding recent experimental results of Packard et al. (2009) who reported shape-recovery data of nanoindents on the same Pt-based metallic glass.