A research team led by Dongwoo Lee, an associate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), working with a team led by Yanhui Liu at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has developed a new electrical resistivity-based indicator for rapidly screening alloy compositions with high glass-forming ability. The findings were published in Advanced Materials.

Metallic glasses are alloys with a unique structure in which atoms are arranged irregularly, as in glass, rather than in the ordered arrangement found in conventional crystalline metals. Many metallic glasses exhibit high strength and wear resistance and can be precisely formed into complex shapes, making them promising materials for robotic components, aerospace systems, and next-generation medical devices. However, glass-forming ability (GFA), which describes how readily an alloy forms a glass rather than a crystal, is difficult to predict. Researchers have traditionally had to fabricate numerous compositions and evaluate them individually using X-ray diffraction or thermal analysis. This process requires considerable time and expense, making the discovery of new metallic glass compositions challenging.

The research team focused on electrical resistivity, which changes as the atomic arrangement an alloy evolves. The team fabricated thin-film libraries with continuous composition gradients and conducted controlled annealing experiments on approximately 3,500 alloy compositions. Alloys with high GFA showed relatively small decreases in electrical resistivity after annealing, reflecting their greater resistance to the development of long-range crystalline order. In contrast, alloys with low GFA crystallized more extensively and exhibited much larger resistivity drops.

Measuring the electrical resistivity of a single composition takes only a few seconds, making the approach hundreds of times faster than conventional diffraction or calorimetry-based characterization. The method can rapidly map GFA trends across broad composition spaces without complex fabrication or and characterization procedures. The researchers also confirmed the same composition-dependent trends in melt-spun ribbon samples produced through a markedly different cooling and solidification process, further demonstrating the reliability of the approach.


“The electrical resistivity change measured in this study provides a fast and intuitive readout of atomic disorder and crystallization resistance,” Lee said. “It is like having a map for navigating an enormously complex multicomponent alloy space containing hundreds of millions of possible combinations. We expect this approach to substantially accelerate the discovery of next-generation bulk metallic glasses and the development of related advanced materials.”

This research was supported by the BK21 Four Project's graduate student overseas training program, the Technology Innovation Development Program of the Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs (TIPA) under the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) under the Ministry of Science and ICT.