Flaw-Insensitive Fracture of a Micrometer-Sized Brittle Metallic Glass

Brittle materials, such as oxide glasses, are usually very sensitive to flaws, giving rise to a macroscopic fracture strength that is much lower than that predicted by theory. The same applies to bulk-metallic glasses (BMGs), with the important difference that these glasses can exhibit certain plastic strain prior to the catastrophic failure. Here we consider the strongest metallic alloy known, a ternary Co55Ta10B35 BMG. We show that this...