Metallic Glass Powder Metallurgy Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Filing peaked in 2017 at 103 families and has declined since, with the 2022 midpoint at 57 — this is a maturing, not a growing, filing environment.
- C22C (alloys) and B22F (powder metallurgy) dominate the IPC mix at 1,013 and 876 records, while H01F (magnetics) at 665 signals a strong soft-magnetic-alloy sub-theme most readers underestimate.
- The most-cited prior art dates to the 1990s beryllium-bearing alloy patents, meaning influence in this corpus is concentrated in foundational chemistry, not recent filings.
Filing growth compares 2021 (77 records) with 2024 (33) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 1,863 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Metallic glass powder metallurgy sits at the intersection of amorphous alloy chemistry and consolidation processing: gas atomization to produce amorphous powder, and spark plasma sintering or related routes to consolidate that powder into bulk parts without crystallizing the glassy structure. The search set combines amorphous alloy / bulk metallic glass terminology with amorphous powder, gas atomization and spark plasma sintering process terms, so it captures filings that address both the material and the way it is made into a usable part.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, with 1,863 total patent families. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any trend line will always look thinner than the underlying filing activity actually was.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,863 families: when the filings happened, and which IPC subclasses they sit in.
A filing peak already behind us
Filings rose to a peak of 103 in 2017, held near the 2022 midpoint of 57, and have tapered toward the most recent partial year. Read the tail end of this chart as understated rather than as a genuine collapse in interest.
Alloys and powder metallurgy lead, magnetics is a real third theme
C22C (alloys) and B22F (powder metallurgy) are the two largest subclasses, consistent with a corpus built around amorphous alloy composition and its consolidation. H01F (magnetics, inductors & transformers) at 665 is large enough to be a distinct commercial thread — soft-magnetic amorphous alloy cores and inductors — rather than a side effect of the search terms. C23C (coating), C21D (heat treatment), B22D (casting), B23K (joining) and C22F (non-ferrous treatment) form a long tail of adjacent processing claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,863 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Metallic Glass Powder Metallurgy with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about metallic glass powder metallurgy and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe prior art that shapes freedom to operate
US20180080109A1 — Methods of making bulk metallic glass from powder and foils
Filed by Apple, this application claims packing metallic glass-forming alloy powder (or amorphous foil layers) into a green body, heating it between the glass transition temperature and melting point, and cooling it back below the glass transition temperature to yield a consolidated bulk metallic glass part.Filed 2018-03-22. The claim scope centers on the thermal window used during consolidation, not on any single alloy composition.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5288344A | Berylllium bearing amorphous metallic alloys formed by low cooling rates | 760 |
| 2 | US5368659A | Method of forming berryllium bearing metallic glass | 540 |
| 3 | US5618359A | Metallic glass alloys of Zr, Ti, Cu and Ni | 476 |
| 4 | US6325868B1 | Nickel-based amorphous alloy compositions | 404 |
| 5 | US20170014169A1 | Methods, devices, and manufacture of the devices for musculoskeletal reconstructive surgery | 269 |
| 6 | US20090162750A1 | Method of producing lithium ion-storing/releasing material, lithium ion-storing/releasing material, and elect… | 238 |
| 7 | US4621031A | Composite material bonded by an amorphous metal, and preparation thereof | 215 |
| 8 | US20100084052A1 | Compositions of corrosion-resistant Fe-based amorphous metals suitable for producing thermal spray coatings | 209 |
| 9 | US20200257933A1 | Machine Learning to Accelerate Alloy Design | 186 |
| 10 | US20050007296A1 | Antenna coil and rfid-use tag using it, transponder-use antenna | 184 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to be cited; treat this table as a map of foundational influence, not of current commercial activity.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Four read-outs from the family, IPC and citation data that matter more than the raw counts.
The field has already crested
Filing activity peaked in 2017 and has declined through the 2022 midpoint of 57 down toward the present. This is characteristic of a technology that has moved from active claim-staking into consolidation, where remaining filings refine rather than expand the core chemistry.
Two dominant claim families, one clear pairing
Alloys (C22C) and powder metallurgy (B22F) are filed together far more often than either appears with any other subclass, confirming this dataset genuinely tracks composition-plus-process claims rather than composition alone.
Influence sits with 1990s beryllium-bearing chemistry
The most-cited records are beryllium-bearing amorphous alloy patents from the mid-1990s. Their continued citation volume signals that later filers still work around, not past, that foundational composition space.
US, EPO and Japan carry most of the volume
The United States leads with 705 records, ahead of the EPO at 328 and Japan at 226; China at 176 and WIPO/PCT at 91 show meaningful but smaller footprints. AT filings at 61 likely reflect EPO-linked national phase entries rather than an independent Austrian filing base.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to metallic glass powder metallurgy, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and who has gone quiet
Co-filing pairs and recent-year momentum both point to a field where a small set of Japanese and Chinese electronics and metals groups built the core portfolio, and most of them have stopped adding to it.
Seiko Epson is the only assignee still filing
Seiko Epson recorded 2 families in the latest year, down 78% year-on-year — a shrinking but non-zero filing rate. Every other tracked assignee, including TDK, Alps Alpine and Tohoku University, shows zero filings in the latest year.
Corporate-academic pairs built the densest portfolios
The strongest co-assignee pair, TDK with Tohoku University, spans 24 shared families — the deepest collaborative filing relationship in the dataset, followed by Alps Alpine with Inoue at 16 and TDK with JFE Steel at 13.
A small, tightly linked filer network
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across 1,863 families, meaning most filings are single-assignee. The collaborative filings that do exist cluster around Japanese electronics and steel groups working on soft-magnetic amorphous alloys.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Seiko Epson Corporation | 2 | -78% |
| TDK Corporation | 0 | — |
| Bomatec Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| TDK Corporation | 0 | — |
| Tohoku University | 0 | — |
| Alps Alpine Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next questions rather than a single conclusion.
Check freedom to operate against the foundational chemistry
Before filing new alloy-composition claims, work through the highest-cited beryllium-bearing and Zr-Ti-Cu-Ni patents, since later filings in this corpus consistently sit adjacent to, rather than inside, that composition space.
Explore prior art in EurekaModel the magnetics sub-branch separately
H01F's 665 records and the TDK-Tohoku co-filing pattern suggest soft-magnetic amorphous alloys behave as a distinct sub-market with its own leaders; treating it separately from bulk structural metallic glass will sharpen any competitive read.
Run a sub-branch analysis in EurekaWatch for renewed filing activity
With almost every tracked assignee at zero filings in the latest year, a resumption by any single player would be a meaningful signal; set up monitoring rather than relying on a one-time snapshot.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
The dataset shows a cluster of Japanese electronics and metals companies at the core of the filing activity, including Seiko Epson, TDK, Alps Alpine and Tohoku University, often filing jointly. Seiko Epson is currently the only one of these assignees still filing in the latest tracked year, though at a reduced rate. This concentration reflects the strong presence of soft-magnetic amorphous alloy applications (H01F) alongside structural metallic glass work.
Filing activity peaked in 2017 at 103 families and has since declined, with the 2022 midpoint at 57 and only a handful recorded in the most recent partial year. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent year understates true activity, but the multi-year trend is clearly downward rather than growing. This pattern is more consistent with a maturing claim landscape than an emerging one.
Gas atomization is the powder-production step: molten amorphous-forming alloy is broken into fine droplets that solidify rapidly enough to form amorphous (glassy) powder rather than crystalline grains. Spark plasma sintering is a consolidation step that uses pulsed electric current and pressure to densify that powder into a bulk part while limiting the heat exposure that could crystallize the glass structure. Patents in this space typically claim either the powder chemistry, the consolidation process, or the combination of both.
Yes. US20180080109A1, assigned to Apple, claims methods of forming bulk metallic glass by packing amorphous alloy powder or foil layers into a green body, heating it into the window between the glass transition temperature and the melting point, then cooling it back below the glass transition temperature. The claims center on this thermal processing window for consolidation rather than on a specific alloy composition, so they can potentially cover multiple alloy systems processed this way.
Based on IPC composition density, sub-areas such as amorphous powder feedstock recycling, spark-plasma consolidation of iron-based soft-magnetic powders, joining of metallic glass parts by welding or brazing, and post-sinter heat treatment control show comparatively thin claim coverage relative to the core alloy and powder-metallurgy subclasses. These are adjacent to heavily filed areas (C22C, B22F) but sit in smaller subclasses like B23K and C21D, suggesting less claim density even where the underlying processing steps are well understood.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.