What we have learned from studies on chemical properties of amorphous alloys?

Amorphous alloys have many attractive characteristics including extremely high corrosion resistance if the sufficient amounts of corrosion-resistant elements are added. The superiority of amorphous alloys is based on the homogeneous single phase nature without any chemical and physical heterogeneities. Although there are processing limitations to avoid the formation of heterogeneous crystalline structure in addition to no welding technology without crystallization, the application of corrosion-resistant amorphous alloys is expected particularly to the very aggressive environments, where any conventional crystalline metallic materials cannot be used. Some amorphous bulk alloys showed zero corrosion mass loss due to spontaneous passivation even in 12 M HCl. Production of amorphous bulk alloys became possible for selected compositions. The homogeneous single phase nature is also effective to form useful catalysts with unique composition and structure. An example of catalysts is for carbon dioxide methanation useful for supply of renewable energy in the form of methane. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.