Mechanical behavior of Au-based metallic glass in micro-scale at ambient and elevated temperatures

The Au based amorphous micro-pillars are fabricated by using focus ion beam (FIB) and tested in micro-compression at ambient and elevated temperatures from 300 to 408 K. The room temperature strength of current micro-pillars could reach to 1600-2000 MPa, much higher than the measured strengths for the 3 mm bulk compression specimen. The stress increment can be rationalized by the Weibull statistics. The current Au based micro-pillars maintain inhomogeneous deformation with one (at most two) principal shear band from 300 up to 393 K. At or above T_g (403 and 408 K), the micro-pillars are deformed in a homogeneous manner without the trace of any shear band. For micro-forming, it should be born in mind that there would be apparent stress increment while forming micro-or nano-scaled patterns and pieces.