X-ray diffraction study of amorphous alloys Al–Ni–Ce–Sc with using Ehrenfest’s formula

The effect of replacement of Ce by Sc in the amorphous Al85Ni10Ce5 alloy on its structure has been studied. The replacement was shown to result in increasing the coordination number in the first coordination sphere, changing the type of short-range order. A splitting the first peak of the function of radial atom distribution into two subpeaks made it possible to determine separately the coordination number for the atom pair groups Ce–Al, Sc–Al, Al–Al and Ni–Al, Al–Al. The structure of the amorphous alloys Al85Ni10Ce5−xScx (x = 0, 1, 5) was determined using X-ray diffractometry combined with application of Ehrenfest’s formula, which allowed us to directly determine the first coordination sphere radius from data on the structure factor and some cluster parameters obtained from the prepeak on the structure factor curve.