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Combinatorial development of antibacterial Zr-Cu-Al-Ag thin film metallic glasses

Metallic alloys are normally composed of multiple constituent elements in order to achieve integration of a plurality of properties required in technological applications. However, conventional alloy development paradigm, by sequential trial-and-error approach, requires completely unrelated strategi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Liu, Yanhui, Padmanabhan, Jagannath, Cheung, Bettina, Liu, Jingbei, Chen, Zheng, Scanley, B. Ellen, Wesolowski, Donna, Pressley, Mariyah, Broadbridge, Christine C., Altman, Sidney, Schwarz, Udo D., Kyriakides, Themis R., Schroers, Jan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4882501/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27230692
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep26950
Descripción
Sumario:Metallic alloys are normally composed of multiple constituent elements in order to achieve integration of a plurality of properties required in technological applications. However, conventional alloy development paradigm, by sequential trial-and-error approach, requires completely unrelated strategies to optimize compositions out of a vast phase space, making alloy development time consuming and labor intensive. Here, we challenge the conventional paradigm by proposing a combinatorial strategy that enables parallel screening of a multitude of alloys. Utilizing a typical metallic glass forming alloy system Zr-Cu-Al-Ag as an example, we demonstrate how glass formation and antibacterial activity, two unrelated properties, can be simultaneously characterized and the optimal composition can be efficiently identified. We found that in the Zr-Cu-Al-Ag alloy system fully glassy phase can be obtained in a wide compositional range by co-sputtering, and antibacterial activity is strongly dependent on alloy compositions. Our results indicate that antibacterial activity is sensitive to Cu and Ag while essentially remains unchanged within a wide range of Zr and Al. The proposed strategy not only facilitates development of high-performing alloys, but also provides a tool to unveil the composition dependence of properties in a highly parallel fashion, which helps the development of new materials by design.