On the structural stability of metallic glasses

We discuss the various possibilities advanced to account for the structural stability of metallic glasses. Using a formalism based on the pseudopotential theory and the Gibbs-Bogoliubov inequality we calculate the free energies and free energies of formation for the glassy phase of MgCa at various concentrations and compare these results with those for the corresponding solid and liquid phases of the same system. Subsequently, we attempt to explain the stability of the metallic glasses by noting a matching between the positions of the first peakq _m in the relevant structure factor and the maximumq _s in the relevant screened pseudopotential.The major part of this work was done in the H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TL, England