Electrical and thermal conductivities of rapidly crystallized Cu-Zr alloys: The effect of anharmonicity

We present a comprehensive study of electrical and thermal conductivities, specific heat and magnetic susceptibility of rapidly crystallized Cu100-xZrx (x = 20–90) alloys. X-ray diffraction analysis has revealed that all the prepared compositions had strongly textured and distorted crystal structures. Different monoclinic and other non-equilibrium phases were detected in the case of glass-forming samples, whereas the alloys without a tendency to form glassy state show almost equilibrium phase content. Metallic type of electrical conductivity and the Kondo anomaly were observed for all the examined samples. It was found that the electrical resistance data cannot be adequately described within the standard Bloch–Grüneisen theory. We use the Debye characteristic temperature as a linear function to fit the electrical conductivity accurately. The composition dependence of the electron density of states at the Fermi level (DOS) has been extracted from room temperature magnetic susceptibility. We found that the glass-forming alloys are characterized by abnormally large values of DOS, which are comparable to those of glassy analogues. Noticeable anharmonic contribution in total specific heat has been revealed for all the studied compositions. In order to estimate the effect of anharmonicity in the system under consideration, we analyzed composition and temperature dependencies of the studied thermal characteristics related to the Grüneisen coefficient. Basing on the results obtained in this study we propose a phenomenological concept to explain abnormal behavior of physical properties of glass-forming Cu-Zr alloys within the standard solid state theory taking into account anharmonic effects.