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Engineering The “Pluripotency” Of Zr-Based Bulk Metallic Glasses As Biomedical Materials, Lu Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) are a family of novel alloys with amorphous microstructures. The combination of their excellent mechanical properties, good chemical stability, high thermal formability, and general biocompatibility has brought up new opportunities for biomaterials. Research in this dissertation was focused on exploring multiple biomedical functionalities of Zr-based BMGs over a wide spectrum, combining materials and biological characterizations, through experimental and computational approaches. Four distinct yet interconnected tasks were endeavored, involving inflammation, hard-tissue implant, soft-tissue prosthesis, and pathogenic infection.

The inflammation that can be potentially triggered by Zr-based BMGs was investigated using macrophages. Lower level or comparable macrophage activations …

Structural Aspects Of Deformation In Bulk Metallic Glasses, Yang Tong

Doctoral Dissertations

Metallic glasses have liquid-like structure without well-defined topological defects like dislocations in metals and alloys. The unique disordered structure of metallic glasses leads to unique mechanical properties, such as inhomogeneous deformation at low temperature and homogeneous deformation at high temperature, and brittle behavior induced by annealing. This dissertation address three critical issues related to the mechanical behavior of metallic glasses:

1. Identification of deformation defects in metallic glasses. We have conducted high energy X-ray diffraction experiment — using anisotropic pair distribution function — to characterize the size and density of defects in metallic glasses activated by external stresses. Our results based …