THERMAL-INDUCED CHEMICAL SHORT-RANGE ORDERING IN AMORPHOUS CO80-XCRXB20 ALLOYS

It was confirmed that a reversible structural relaxation was induced t hermally in an amorphous Co50Cr30B20 alloy. The reversible change in t he electrical resistance was checked by isochronal annealing of the sp ecimen pre-stabilized at a temperature well below the crystallization temperature. The kinetics of the relaxation process were investigated within the AES model. In this model, the structural relaxation is trea ted as a thermal transition between two states within an energy spectr um. To estimate the distribution Q(E) = c(E)q(E)BAR, where c(E)BAR and q(E) represent a coupling constant and a distribution of the activati on energy, the specimens were annealed isothermally at various tempera tures. The Q(E) obtained shows a spectrum with a broad peak around 2.1 eV. The spectrum exhibits a tail to larger values of the activation e nergy in the case of annealing at higher temperature, and this may be explained by the onset of a two-step relaxation.