Fig. 1. (a) Schematic illustration of the magnetron setup for the co-sputtering of the Pd-W-Si alloy library; (b) The appearance of the fabricated thin-film Pd-W-Si alloy library on the silicon substrate, in which there are 672 patches of ≈3 mm in diameter, with each patch containing one individual alloy composition.

Fig. 2. The compositional distribution of (a) Pd, (b) W, and (c) Si across the sputtered wafer, as measured by EDX; (d) XRD analysis of the combinatorially sputtered wafer exposing the phase of each patch.

Fig. 3. The dependence of (a) Er, (b) H, (c) Er2/H, and (d) Wp/Wt on the elemental composition of Pd-W-Si alloys, respectively. The dotted lines mark the boundary between amorphous and crystalline patches.

Fig. 4. The ‘plasticity parameters' Er2/H (a, b) and Wp/Wt (c, d) plotted as a function of Pd and Si concentrations in amorphous and crystalline patches of the Pd-W-Si alloy library, respectively.

Fig. 5. (a) The reduced elastic modulus Er as a function of the Pd and Si concentrations for the 363 amorphous Pd-W-Si alloys; (b) Er plotted as a function of the concentrations of W and Pd as extracted from the data in (a).

Fig. 6. The proposed atomic model in the ternary Pd-W-Si amorphous alloys: (a) clusters (I) and (b) clusters (II) represent the Si-centered clusters and W-centered clusters in the system respectively; (c) The springs of E1, E2, E3, and E4 represent the bonding strength of Si-Pd, W-Pd, Si-W, and Pd-Pd, respectively; (d) linking (I) and (e) (II) represent predominantly Si-centered clusters and W-centered clusters with a low and medium concentration of W, respectively; (f) linking (III) reflects clusters with a relatively high concentration of W; (g) linking (IV) illustrates a situation where type (I) and type (II) clusters are adhering by solvent-solvent (Pd-Pd) bonding in materials with a high concentration of Pd. The letter “S” in (d), (e), and (f) denotes shell Pd atoms, and the purple dashed circles delineate the clusters.