Glassy metals

Abstract

Glassy metals not only exhibit technologically interesting properties, e.g. high fracture strength, excellent soft magnetic behaviour and good corrosion resistance, they also constitute ideal materials for the studies of low-temperature transport, critical behaviour and electrical properties of disordered metals. Considerable efforts at understanding their structure, atomic and electronic transport properties and low-temperature behaviour have been made. The author describes the nature of the glassy state, various quenching techniques and glass-forming alloys, and discusses structural models, experimental structural data and atomic transport properties including diffusivities and kinetics of structural relaxation, magnetic aging and crystallisation. The mechanical properties and magnetic behaviour are summarised, with emphasis laid on the influence of modification of these properties due to changes in structural and chemical disorder and states of magnetisation. Finally the electrical transport properties, spin wave excitations and critical behaviour, thermal and acoustic behaviour at very low temperatures, and chemical properties are presented.