Amorphous metals and alloys, and especially the metallic glass ribbon or Metglas alloys developed by Allied Corporation, have been shown to have very remarkable properties. There is special interest in magnetic iron-base alloy ribbon which is finding commercial uses in electromagnetic laminate applications such as transformers. There is intense interest in fabricating other metal glass structures, but conventional powder metallurgy techniques are intractible even when amorphous powders are available because of the dramatic property degradation when crystallization occurs at elevated temperatures.Recent research has demonstrated that metal and alloy powders can be efficiently consolidated using explosives. The resulting materials can have unique microstructure and properties, and under certain circumstances, interparticle melting does not seem to occur, and particle bonding is apparently achieved by a kind of “mechanical mixing” similar to that explored earlier by Benjamin, and more recently by Kang. In addition, Murr, et al have also recently demonstrated that the passage of strong shock waves through amorphous (glassy) iron-base ribbon at pressures as high as 30 GPa (and 2 μs pulse duration) did not induce crystallization.
The fabrication of boron carbide compacts by explosive consolidation
