Deoxidation of bulk metallic glasses by hydrogen arc melting

Hydrogen arc melting (HAM) was conducted to investigate the deoxidization effects of HAM on Zr-based alloys. The effects of the hydrogen percentage and melting duration on the oxygen content and glass-forming ability of Zr55Cu30Ni5Al10 alloys were studied. Because of the increase in the hydrogen percentage and the melting duration, the oxygen content of the alloys greatly decreased after HAM, which alleviated the detrimental effect of oxygen and improved the glass-forming ability. Thus, HAM-deoxidation may provide an effective and simple method to remove the oxygen from Zr-based metallic glasses, which can improve the prospects for widespread applications of Zr-based metallic glasses. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.