Driving Force for the Nucleation from Supercooled Liquid and Thermodynamic Analysis of Glass Forming Ability for Binary Alloys

Using CALPHAD (calculation of phase diagrams) technique and the reported ther- modynamic parameters, the driving forces for the formations of all crystalline phases from supercooled liquid states were analyzed, and the composition ranges with low crystalline abilities but high glass forming abilities (GFA) were estimated thermodynamically for glass forming systems. The typical glass forming binary systems, Cu-Zr, Ni-Nb and Pd-Si, were selected and investigated, in which the eutectic depths in the equilibrium phase diagrams are visibly different. The compositional dependency of GFA was predicted in each alloy system, the best glass formers were obtained and compared with the eutectic points and the experimental results. The present estimation fit the experimental results well.