Estimating the activation energy for the non-isothermal crystallization of an amorphous Sb9.1Te20.1Se70.8 alloy

In this work, the activation energies of crystallization of amorphous Sb9.1Te20.1Se70.8 have been studied under non-isothermal conditions using a differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) technique. The analysis focuses on the effect of temperature (413 ≤ T ≤ 437 K) on the DSC results. The three isoconversional methods of Friedman, Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose (KAS) and Vyazovkin were used to determine the variation of the activation energy for crystallization with temperature, Eα(T). The KAS and Vyazovkin methods gave identical values, and the range of Eα(T) was found to vary from 128.7 down to 77.8 kJ mol−1, while the Friedman method gave lower values with Eα(T) from 84.1 to 31.2 kJ mol−1. The effects of annealing were revealed by studying the morphology of the samples using scanning electron microscopy.