A new approach to understanding and measuring glass formation in bulk amorphous materials

This paper summarizes our recent work on the understanding of glass formation from considering both liquid phase stability and crystallization resistance from a physical metallurgical point of view. A comprehensive expression to predict glass-forming ability (GFA) for various glass-forming systems, γ=Tx/(Tg+Tl), was derived, where Tx is the crystallization temperature, Tg the glass transition temperature and Tl the liquidus temperature. Our physical-metallurgy approach is supported strongly by experimental data reported for various bulk amorphous materials. Also, some misconception commonly used for assessing the GFA in the literature will be clarified.