ON THE EFFECT OF THE NUMBER OF COMPONENTS ON GLASS-FORMING ABILITY OFALLOYS FROM THE LIQUID-STATE - APPLICATION TO THE NEW-GENERATION OF MULTICOMPONENT BULK GLASSES

The aim of this work is to demonstrate that an increase of the number of components in a liquid glass forming alloy may contribute to inhibi t intermetallic nucleation thus enhancing glass-forming ability. The a pproach is based on an analysis of the distribution of concentration f luctuations in undercooled multicomponent liquid alloys. It is demonst rated that fluctuations in the undercooled liquid can help intermetall ic nucleation in a certain range of temperature and concentration. Add ition of one component lowers the probability of creating a nucleant f luctuation by a factor of ten. Furthermore such a stochastic approach shows that, provided the wettability of the embryo on heterophase nucl eants remains moderate, heterogeneous nucleation can even be suppresse d in the highly undercooled domain of the multicomponent liquid. The p ossibility of obtaining multicomponent bulk metallic glasses with low cooling rates from high purity liquid alloys, which however contain a significant amount of heterophase nucleants, can be explained by the p roposed approach.