Topological instability as a criterion for design and selection of easy glass-former compositions in Cu-Zr based systems

In the present work we propose a new approach for predicting the best glass-former composition(s) in multi-component metallic glasses. By applying the lambda criterion. a topological instability criterion proposed to predict the crystallisation behaviour of Al-based systems, we show that it is also successfully possible to reproduce compositional ranges where binary and ternary bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) have recently been obtained. Our results indicate that the good glass-former composition(s) lie(s) within fields of mutual and simultaneous topological instability of all the crystalline phases competing with glassy phase.