Glass Forming Ability of Metallic Glasses Evaluated by a New Criterion

The glass-forming ability (GFA) of Cu--Zr binary alloys is evaluated using the existing criteria based on calorimetric parameters, and poor relations are found. Therefore, another parameter T_rk defined as T_k/T_l, in which T_k is the Kauzmann temperature and T_l the equilibrium liquidus temperature, is proposed. It exhibits good agreements with the experimental data of the Cu--Zr system and other representative bulk metallic glass formers so long as classifying them into strong or fragile category. It is suggested that kinetic effects are irrelevantly incorporated in the GFA analysis in the previous work.