Calculating formation range of binary amorphous alloys fabricated by electroless plating

Journal of Theoretical and Applied Physics, Feb 2016

A lot of amorphous alloy deposits in the binary (Ni, Co, Cu)–(P, B) alloy systems fabricated by electroless plating (EP) have been reported up to date. But no one reported their theoretical modeling of the amorphous formation and calculated their concentration range of amorphous formation (RAF). Using Miedema model and subregular model scheme, the RAFs for the six EP (Ni, Co, Cu)–(P, B) alloys and three Ni–Cu, Ni–Co and Co–Cu alloys have been calculated systematically for the first time. The calculated results are in agreement with experimental observations. Experiments and calculations for the RAFs in the latter three alloy systems reveal that not any RAF formed except crystalline states. The huge difference between the six metal–metalloid alloys and three metal–metal alloys in RAF has been discussed in detail in the paper.

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Calculating formation range of binary amorphous alloys fabricated by electroless plating

J Theor Appl Phys Calculating formation range of binary amorphous alloys fabricated by electroless plating Bangwei Zhang 0 1 2 Shuzhi Liao 0 1 2 Xiaolin Shu 0 1 2 Haowen Xie 0 1 2 0 Department of Physics, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics , Beijing 100083 , People's Republic of China 1 Key Laboratory of Quantum Structures and Quantum Control of Ministry of Education, Department of Physics, Hunan Normal University , Changsha 410081 , People's Republic of China 2 College of Physics, Hunan University , Changsha 410082 , People's Republic of China A lot of amorphous alloy deposits in the binary (Ni, Co, Cu)-(P, B) alloy systems fabricated by electroless plating (EP) have been reported up to date. But no one reported their theoretical modeling of the amorphous formation and calculated their concentration range of amorphous formation (RAF). Using Miedema model and subregular model scheme, the RAFs for the six EP (Ni, Co, Cu)-(P, B) alloys and three Ni-Cu, Ni-Co and Co-Cu alloys have been calculated systematically for the first time. The calculated results are in agreement with experimental observations. Experiments and calculations for the RAFs in the latter three alloy systems reveal that not any RAF formed except crystalline states. The huge difference between the six metal-metalloid alloys and three metalmetal alloys in RAF has been discussed in detail in the paper. Binary amorphous alloys; Electroless plating; Miedema model and subregular model scheme; Range of amorphous formation Introduction Just after discovering the electroless plating (EP) Ni–P alloy deposits by Brenner and Riddell [ 1 ], Gutzeit and Mapp [ 2 ] measured the composition and structure of ‘Kanigen’ coating by X-ray and electron diffraction. They found that Kanigen coatings have the structure of an amorphous, solid substance with liquid-like disorder of the atoms. Up to date, a lot of EP amorphous alloy deposits and their concentration ranges including binary, ternary and quaternary alloy coatings have been reported. Table 1 lists the experimental data of the range of amorphous formation (RAF) for the most important nine EP binary Ni–P, Ni–B, Co–P, Co–B, Cu–P, Cu–B, Ni–Cu, Ni–Co and Co–Cu alloy systems, which will be analyzed and theoretically modeled in this paper. Several features can be found from this measured data list, but they will be illustrated in the below text. It is well known that comparing to its crystalline phase counterpart an amorphous alloy prepared by any one method can have specific superior properties. Therefore, if the RAF in an alloy system is large, then every alloy in the RAF must be in the amorphous state, and the properties of the alloy system definitely have advantages. That is to say, it is also very important to study the RAF in the EP. This may be because people paid much attention to measure the RAF in EP. The data in Table 1 just illustrate some of them which will be considered in the paper. The problem is that nearly 70 years after discovering the EP Ni–P alloy deposits by Brenner and Riddell, almost no one reported the theoretical model and calculations of the RAF in EP alloy deposits up to date. This situation is somewhat strange because people have been measuring a lot of the RAF in EP alloy coatings. In addition, as described in the above paragraph, either from the 10–90 Present 20–90 Present 24–68 Present 20–86 10–91 Present Present No RAF Present No RAF Present No RAF Present RAF, at.% Refs. RAF, at.% Refs. Calculated results 18–88 Present Ni–P Ni–P Ni–P Ni–P Ni–P Ni–P Ni–P Ni–B Ni–B Ni–B Ni–B Ni–B Co–P Co–P Co–B Co–B Cu–P Cu–B Cu–Ni Ni–Co Ni–Co Co–Cu theoretical view point or from the practice application, the description and calculation for the formation range of EP amorphous alloys are very important. So, one may say with a little pity that there is a theoretical gap for the theoretical calculation of formation range of such amorphous alloy systems. The reason for this problem is somewhat strange as said above, it is because the situation is different with that in the conventional amorphous alloys prepared by melt quenching (MQ) and mechanical alloying (MA) methods. Perhaps the number of the manufactured conventional amorphous alloy systems is more in quantity, but the studies of the RAF in such alloy systems are also not few. For example, Johnson’s group in 2003 [ 22 ] used the magnitude of atomic size ratio of 0.60 \ k \ 0.95 to predict the RAF of Cu binary and ternary alloys from the melt. Kim et al. [ 23 ] proposed a new thermodynamic calculation scheme to estimate the composition dependency of glass forming ability in multicomponent alloy systems. Rao et al. [ 24 ] predicted the best glass forming composition identified by drawing iso-Gibbs energy change contours by representing quinary systems as pseudo-ternary ones. Sun et al. [ 25 ] calculated the RAF in Al–Ni–RE (Ce, La, Y) ternary alloys and their sub-binaries based on Miedema’s model. Das e (...truncated)


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Bangwei Zhang, Shuzhi Liao, Xiaolin Shu, Haowen Xie. Calculating formation range of binary amorphous alloys fabricated by electroless plating, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Physics, 2016, pp. 129-137, Volume 10, Issue 2, DOI: 10.1007/s40094-016-0210-3