Glass formation of the Fe–Hf system studied by thermodynamic calculation and ion beam mixing

For the Fe–Hf system characterized by a negative heat of formation, the glass-forming range/ability (GFR/GFA) was studied by thermodynamic calculation based on Miedema's model and Alonso's method. It was found that amorphous phase could be formed in a composition range of 24–86 atom% Hf and that alloy with composition of Fe58Hf42 has the best GFA in the system. Experimentally, ion beam mixing was carried out to synthesize amorphous alloys in the Fe–Hf system. It turned out that in the samples with overall compositions located in the calculated GFR, amorphous phases were indeed obtained, whereas no amorphous phase was obtained if the overall compositions were located outside of the predicted region favoring for amorphous alloy formation, showing a good agreement between the experimental results and the thermodynamic calculation.