Non-isothermal crystallization kinetics and glass-forming ability of Cu–Zr–Ti–In bulk metallic glasses

In this paper, bulk metallic glasses with the compositions of Cu55−zZr37Ti8Inz (z = 1, 3 and 5 at.%) have been evaluated from the viewpoint of thermodynamics and kinetics. The activation energies corresponding to the characteristic temperatures have been calculated and the results show that the as-cast alloys have a good stability in thermodynamics. The difficulty of each crystallization step was discussed with activation energy. Furthermore, crystallization mechanism of each as-cast alloy was studied by phase transformation and local Avrami exponent. Depending on the fragility index, Cu54Zr37Ti8In1 can be classified to “strong glasses” and Cu52Zr37Ti8In3 and Cu50Zr37Ti8In5 should be considered as “intermediate glasses”. In addition, glass-forming ability of each alloy was discussed thoroughly. The results demonstrate that glass-forming ability increases with content of In element.