The constraint in sample size imposed by the critical cooling rate necessary for glass formation using conventional casting techniques is possibly the most critical limitation for the extensive use of bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) in structural applications. This drawback has been recently overcome by processing glass-forming systems via additive manufacturing, finally enabling the synthesis of BMGs with no size limitation. Although processing by additive manufacturing allows fabricating BMG objects with virtually no shape limitation, thermoplastic forming of additively manufactured BMGs may be necessary for materials optimization. Thermoplastic forming of BMGs is carried out above the glass transition temperature, where these materials behave as highly viscous liquids; the analysis of the viscosity is thus of primary importance. In this work, the temperature dependence of viscosity of the Zr52.5Cu17.9Ni14.6Al10Ti5 metallic glass fabricated by casting and laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is investigated. We observed minor differences in the viscous flow of the specimens fabricated by the different techniques that can be ascribed to the higher porosity of the LPBF metallic glass. Nevertheless, the present results reveal a similar overall variation of viscosity in the cast and LPBF materials, which offers the opportunity to shape additively manufactured BMGs using already developed thermoplastic forming techniques.
Keywords: additive manufacturing; bulk metallic glass; laser powder bed fusion; thermoplastic forming; viscosity.