Chemical independent relaxation in metallic glasses from the nanoindentation experiments

In this article, we studied the anelastic properties at low-load nanoindentations of different metallic glasses, including Zr-, Pd-, La-, Mg-, and Au-bases. It is verified that the “two-parameter Kelvin model” is suitable for analyzing the anelastic mechanical behavior. Despite the difference in the chemical composition of these alloys, the energy barrier against the local relaxation is almost equal. The energy barrier is much smaller than that of slow β relaxation, which denotes a faster relaxation mechanism. These findings give insights into the heterogeneous nature of mechanical behavior and relaxation characteristics of metallic glasses.