Proposed correlation of glass formation ability with critical dosage for the amorphous alloys formed by ion beam mixing

Abstract

A negative correlation of glass formation ability with the critical dosage, i.e. minimum ion-dosage, is first proposed for the amorphous alloys formed by ion beam mixing (IBM), i.e. the lower the critical ion-dosage (D_c) the better the glass formation ability (GFA), suggesting that D_c could serve as an indicator to the GFA of these alloys. The correlation is not only supported by the results of experiments such as IBM and liquid melt quenching (LMQ), but is also proven to be relevant by thermodynamic calculations. The proposal helps to bridge the gap of experimental data between different producing methods, e.g. making it possible to apply the IBM results to designing alloy compositions when producing metallic glasses by LMQ. The limitations and prospects are also presented in the discussion.