Glass forming ability of Zr-based Zr-Cu-Ni-Al-(Ag) alloys

A series of Zr-based glasses has been obtained by rapid melt quenching and their thermal characteristics (T-g, T-x, T-l) were determined by DSC/DTA. Some of the most recognized glass forming ability (GFA) criteria were applied to predict the glass forming ability of the alloys and to study its dependence on the alloy composition. As a result, the best glass forming compositions among the studied alloys could be selected. It was found that as a general trend an increase of the Zr content results in T-x and Delta T-x (= T-x - T-g) decrease. The determined liquidus temperatures of chosen compositions with substantially different Delta T-x were found to vary relatively little. Therefore, it was concluded that the variation in the GFA of the studied alloys is mainly due to difficulties in the crystallization process, rather than to different stability of the melts.

Automated summary

A series of Zr-based glasses were obtained by rapid melt quenching and their thermal characteristics were determined. Glass forming ability criteria were applied to predict the glass forming ability of the alloys and study its dependence on the alloy composition. The variation in the glass forming ability was mainly due to difficulties in the crystallization process rather than the stability of the melts.