Pecularities of electrical resistivity during transformations in amorphous and nanocrystalline alloys

Classical transformations from rapidly quenched amorphous into (nano)crystalline state monitored by time and temperature evolution of electrical resistivity are discussed as a typical case. Common and different features observed in these transformations, related to local structural and chemical arrangements, are compared with special cases, e.g. sharp increase of resistivity during energy-intensive crystallization observed in Fe-Ni based amorphous systems. A drastic increase of electrical resistivity during transformation in Al-V system is attributed to the formation of nanoquasicrystalline structures with a predicted pseudogap in the electron density at the Fermi level. The results are correlated with microstructure observations and with data from routinely used methods of kinetic analysis with respect to the expected local atomic ordering in amorphous precursor systems. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.