Evaluation of glass-forming ability for metallic glasses based on order-disorder competition

Abstract

The authors propose a calculable parameter ε, defined as a negative ratio of mixing entropy to mixing enthalpy, to evaluate the glass-forming ability (GFA) of metallic glasses from the viewpoint of a competition of disordering against ordering. It is found that the GFAs of most typical metallic glasses linearly distribute with ε and the likely formation area of bulk metallic glass could be conservatively restricted within 0.25<ε<0.6K−1. The prediction of Tb–Fe–Al glassy alloys shows promise for rapidly locating glass formers with less cost.