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)