Crystallization behavior of a series of Zr-based metallic glasses

Abstract

A series of Zr-Al-Ni-Cu metallic glasses were elaborately designed by combination of multiple optimization strategies and their nonisothermal and isothermal crystallization kinetics were systematically investigated. The results show that the compositions of these metallic glasses are off-eutectic. They have similar crystallization behaviors including glass transition temperature, crystallization temperature, single-step crystallization process, crystallization activation energy and Avrami exponent. The glass forming ability of these metallic glasses is almost equivalent, but slightly decreases with increasing Zr content. The crystalline phases are hp-Zr6Al2Ni and t-CuZr2 in both nonisothermal and isothermal cases for the partially and fully crystallized samples. The content of hp-Zr6Al2Ni decreases with increasing Zr content, while opposite for that of t-CuZr2. The crystallization mechanism is the growth of particles with decreasing nucleation rate for the studied Zr-based metallic glasses. This work would shed light on discovering the quantitative correlation between the microstructure and the crystalline phases for the metallic glasses.