[1] Containing only elements which already exist inside the human body, namely Mg, Zn and Ca, these amorphous alloys are a special type of biodegradable metal.
An important consequence of this was that metallic glasses could only be produced in a limited number of forms (typically ribbons, foils, or wires) in which one or more dimensions were small so that heat could be extracted quickly enough to achieve the necessary cooling rates.
This unlikely asset was seized upon by Li in 2008, who made use of the Poisson ratio principle and increased Mg content at the expense of Zn to further enhance plasticity.
Further improvements were achieved by incremental addition of Ca to the Mg72Zn28 binary composition, producing numerous ternary alloys along the 350 °C isotherm of the Mg-Zn-Ca system.
In static distilled water at room temperature, Dahlman et al.[7] also reported destructive corrosion reactions of the same material, decomposing into a multiphase powder.