A comparative study on the glass-forming ability of some alloys in the Sb-As-Se system by differential scanning calorimetry

The glass-forming ability and devitrification of alloys in the Sb-As-Se system have been studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). A comparison of various simple quantitative methods to assess the level of stability of glassy materials in the above-mentioned system is presented. All these methods are based on the characteristic temperatures, obtained by heating of the samples in non-isothermal regime, such as the glass transition temperature, Tg, the temperature at which crystallization begins, Tin, the temperature corresponding to the maximum crystallization rate, Tp, or the melting temperature, Tm. In this work, a kinetic parameter Kr(T) is added to the stability criteria. The thermal stability of some ternary compounds of SbxAs0.60−(2x+y)Se0.40+x+y-type has been evaluated experimentally and correlated with the activation energies of crystallization by this kinetic criterion and compared with those evaluated by other criteria.