CHEMICAL SHORT-RANGE ORDER AND ELECTRONIC-STRUCTURE IN AMORPHOUS METAL METALLOID ALLOYS

A microscopic calculation of the chemical short-range order (CSRO) in the Fe(x)B1-x metallic glasses is presented. The atomic structure of amorphous metal-metalloid alloys is simulated by using an extended Bethe lattice in which different coordination numbers for Fe and B atoms are taken into account. A tight-binding Hamiltonian including p orbitals for B and sd orbitals for Fe is used to describe the concentration dependence of the electronic structure of this alloy. A generalized Warren-Cowley parameter is calculated and is compared with the experimental one. More particularly, we focus our attention on the cohesive properties of these alloys in correlation with CSRO and we present a discussion on the stability of these alloys in the glass-forming range.