Hard and fragile holmium-based bulk metallic glasses

A family of holmium-based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) with high glass-forming ability is obtained. The Ho-based BMGs exhibit much larger elastic moduli and high thermal stability in contrast to other known rare-earth (RE)-based BMGs. In particular, the BMGs show a large value of fragility. It is expected that the hard RE-based glasses with high glass-forming ability and fragile behaviors make them the appropriate candidate for glass transition study.