Thermodynamic approach for predicting the glass forming ability of amorphous alloys

A new thermodynamic calculation scheme has been proposed to estimate the composition dependency of glass forming ability in multicomponent alloy systems. The driving forces of formation of crystalline phases were calculated under metastable supercooled liquid states, using a CALPHAD thermodynamic calculation technique. The composition which shows a local minimum of the driving forces was selected as a composition with the highest glass forming ability in the given alloy system. This method was applied to the Cu-Ti-Zr ternary system. The experimentally reported composition dependency of the glass forming ability could be successfully explained. The driving force criterion can be used as a simple calculation scheme to search a multicomponent alloy composition with high glass forming ability for the development of bulk amorphous alloys. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.