Correlations for the thermal expansion coefficients of molten glass forming systems

Abstract

The specific volumes of molten Pd40Ni40P20, Pd77Cu6.5Si16.5, Pd82Si18, and Ni80P20, which are all glass formers, and were measured near the liquidus. It was found that the ratio α/Tg, where α is the thermal expansion coefficient and Tg is the glass transition temperature, remains fairly constant for all these systems. The scaling follows from the fact that with a larger thermal expansion coefficient, the free volume of the molten system would be squeezed out faster resulting in a larger Tg. This scaling behavior also allows us to roughly predict the glass transition temperature of a glass forming system. The glass forming ability can also be predicted by a parameter defined as α/T1.