Relaxation of bulk metallic glasses studied by mechanical spectroscopy

The relaxational dynamics in metallic glasses (MGs) is investigated by using mechanical spectroscopy. The spectra show that in MGs there are two relaxations: (i) the α relaxation, linked to the glass transition, as observed in other classes of amorphous materials; and (ii) the β relaxation, well observed below the glass transition, with an intensity strongly dependent on the MG composition, the nature of which has been linked to the local microstructure of MGs. For the investigated MGs we find that the intensity and relaxation time of the β relaxation depends, in a reproducible fashion, on the thermal history of the samples. During aging experiments, the intensity decreases (as well as the τβ) with a time dependence described well by a stretched exponential, with an exponent β(aging) independent of the driving frequency. Moreover, we find that the activation energy Uβ and the peak temperature Tβp of the β relaxation follow the approximate relationship: Uβ ≈ 31.5RTβp (for driving frequency 1 Hz), indicating that the high temperature limit of the peak frequency is approximately the same for all the MGs investigated. Finally, the frequency separation of the α and β processes in the mechanical loss spectra for La-and Pd-based metallic glasses is tested against the prediction of the Coupling Model.