A new criterion for predicting glass forming ability of bulk metallic glasses and some critical discussions

Abstract

A modified criterion, β', defined as Tg/Tx–Tg/(Tl·η) (Tg, Tx, Tl) and η denote the glass transition temperature, the onset of crystallization temperature, the liquidus temperature and constant coefficient, respectively), has been proposed for assessing the glass-forming ability (GFA) of bulk metallic glasses (BMGs). A survey of the readily available experimental data associated with the thermal analysis of various BMG alloys demonstrates that the new β' criterion exhibits much better correlation with the GFA than other currently used criteria. But, it is more significant from statistical results to note that, all criteria including the currently proposed criterion β', which are all combined by Tg, Tx and Tl, almost have equal ability in measuring the glass forming ability in any glass-forming system.