Wear resistance of spark plasma sintered Fe-based BMG reinforced with Al₂O₃

Metallic glasses present remarkable characteristics such as mechanical properties, wear, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility, among others, but their production is still limited to bulk materials. In this work, the Spark Plasma Sintering technique is used to elaborate Fe-based Bulk metallic glass. The densification, hardness, fracture toughness, and wear resistance are adjusted with the addition of 1 wt% Al₂O₃ particles of different sizes. The alumina particles were mixed with the metallic particles. All the samples were sintered with a maximum temperature of 560 °C and a pressure of 300 MPa. The addition of micro-sized alumina particles (30 µm) positively affected the samples' hardness, wear resistance, and fracture toughness. However, the nano-sized particles (50 nm) and fume particles (≥ 30 nm) did not show an improvement in hardness, density, or wear resistance but did show increased fracture toughness in the material. Young's modulus was not adversely affected when the ceramic particles were added to the metallic glass matrix.