Thermodynamic evaluation and experimental verification of the glass forming ability of Cu-Zr-based alloys

The prediction of glass forming ability (GFA) of alloys is of vital importance for the development of novel amorphous alloys. In this paper, the GFA of Cu-Zr-based alloys was calculated by an integrated thermodynamic parameter (PHSS), which involves the influences of mixing enthalpy (Delta HChem), mismatch entropy (S sigma) and configurational entropy (Delta Sc). Our General Solution Model (GSM) was used for the prediction of Delta HChem, which showed better consistency with experimental data than Gallego or Takeuchi model. Besides, the correlations of PHSS with Critical Diameter (Dc) was found and fitted well with experimental data. Moreover, the glass forming ranges of two types of Cu-Zr-based alloys were predicted according to PHSS, which was verified by experiment and agreed well with the experimental data available in reference and our experimental results. Therefore, the prediction of PHSS combined with GSM model is expected to provide guidelines for the design of Cu-Zr-based amorphous alloys.