TY - JOUR
T1 - Combinatorial development of antibacterial Zr-Cu-Al-Ag thin film metallic glasses
AU - Liu, Yanhui
AU - Padmanabhan, Jagannath
AU - Cheung, Bettina
AU - Liu, Jingbei
AU - Chen, Zheng
AU - Scanley, B. Ellen
AU - Wesolowski, Donna
AU - Pressley, Mariyah
AU - Broadbridge, Christine C.
AU - Altman, Sidney
AU - Schwarz, Udo D.
AU - Kyriakides, Themis R.
AU - Schroers, Jan
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are grateful for support from NSF under Grant No. MRSEC DMR 1119826 (CRISP).
PY - 2016/5/27
Y1 - 2016/5/27
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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U2 - 10.1038/srep26950
DO - 10.1038/srep26950
M3 - Article
C2 - 27230692
AN - SCOPUS:84971281748
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 6
JO - Scientific reports
JF - Scientific reports
M1 - 26950
ER -