Rare Earth Elements on Glass-forming Ability and Thermal Stability of Cu-Zr-Al Metallic Glass

The rare earth elements (RE = Y, Sm, La, Ce) were used as alloying materials in Cu50Zr45Al5 BMG, and their influences on the glass-forming ability and thermal stability were studied in this paper. All the samples remained in full metallic glass state with minor additions of Y, Sm and La. Increasing the amount of RE additions, the Cu10Zr7 and Zr2Cu phases precipitated and glass transition temperature T-g and crystallization temperature T-x significantly decreased. The reduced glass transition temperature T-rg =T-g/T-l ranged from 0.592 to 0.611 and the gamma parameter ranged from 0.393 to 0.409.