Estimating the activation energy for the non-isothermal crystallization of an amorphous Sb 9.1Te 20.1Se 70.8 alloy

Abstract

In this work, the activation energies of crystallization of amorphous Sb 9.1Te 20.1Se 70.8 have been studied under non-isothermal conditions using a differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) technique. The analysis focuses on the effect of temperature (413 ≤ T ≤ 437 K) on the DSC results. The three isoconversional methods of Friedman, Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose (KAS) and Vyazovkin were used to determine the variation of the activation energy for crystallization with temperature, E α ( T). The KAS and Vyazovkin methods gave identical values, and the range of E α ( T) was found to vary from 128.7 down to 77.8 kJ mol −1, while the Friedman method gave lower values with E α ( T) from 84.1 to 31.2 kJ mol −1. The effects of annealing were revealed by studying the morphology of the samples using scanning electron microscopy.