Stability of amorphous alloys

The thermal stability of a number of Ti-base and Zr-base amorphous alloys was studied by means of differential scanning calorimetry. The crystallization temperatures of these amorphous alloys and those reported in the literature for a variety of other amorphous alloys (actinide-base alloys an refractory metal-base alloys) were analysed in terms of the corresponding formation enthalpies. It is shown that there is no correlation between the crystallization temperatures and the formation enthalpies. On the other hand the crystallization temperatures were found to scale more or less linearly to the corresponding formation enthalpies of a hole the size of the smaller type of atom in the binary amorphous alloys.