The kinetics of internal structural relaxation of metallic glasses probed with ion beams and resistivity measurements

The kinetics of structural relaxations in glassy metal Zr65Al7.5Cu27.5 films are monitored using resistivity measurements. As-prepared samples irreversibly relax towards their metastable equilibrium or steady-state in close relation to co-occurring surface smoothing, when exposed to annealing and ion treatment. Vice versa, ion beams are used as a tool to probe the response to small structural disturbances which are found to relax thermally following a stretched exponential time dependence. A strongly decreasing Kohlrausch exponent with temperature indicates increasing dynamic heterogeneities during successive freezing out of relaxational modes. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.