NANOSTRUCTURED AND BULK AMORPHOUS Zr-BASED ALLOYS PREPARED BY MECHANICAL ALLOYING AND ARC MELTING

We have produced powders of nanostructured and amorphous alloys as well as bulk amorphous alloys with composition Zr 64 Cu 18 Ni 10 Al 8 by mechanical alloying and by quenching arc melted melts in water cooled cooper dies, respectively. The alloys were investigated by X-ray diffraction as well as by thermal analysis in order to determine the structure and thermal properties. The mechanical alloyed amorphous powders and bulk amorphous cylinders show the same thermal and X-ray characteristics. For the amorphous powders, we find that the glass transition temperature Tg is 657 K and the crystallization temperature Tx is 752 K. For bulk amorphous alloys with the same composition prepard by arc melting and liquid quenching Tgis 655 K and the Tx is 725 K. Moreover for the bulk amorphous alloys the supercooled liquid region Δ Txg is 70 K, the reduced glass transition temperature tg is 0.557, the Lu–Liu parameter γ which represents the glass forming ability for bulk metallic glasses is 0.396 and experimentally the critical cooling rate Rc takes the value 7 K s -1.