Free standing bulk metallic glass microcomponents: Tooling considerations

Bulk metallic glasses have enormous potential for use in small-scale devices such as MEMS and biomedical components. Thermoplastic forging of free standing components poses challenges unlike those seen when forging crystalline materials. Central to these challenges is the simultaneous advantage/disadvantage that BMGs flow readily into small features and asperities in the dies and molds. Whilst useful for replicating patterned surfaces, this quite often makes non-destructive removal of components quite difficult, with disproportionate extraction forces and specialized tools required to overcome friction and mechanical locking. Several solutions to this extraction problem were explored, including high temperature extraction, lubrication and the use of materials with low coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) as die/mold materials. We show that the use of appropriately chosen low CTE die materials offers a superior method to remove BMG components from dies/molds at room temperature. The criteria for selecting the appropriate die material, cavity size and extraction temperatures are outlined.