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Nucleation of Al Nanocrystals in Solute-Substituted Al Metallic Glasses I: Structural characterization

Primary crystallization in high Al-content metallic glasses is driven by nanometer-diameter regions with internal structure similar to fcc Al. Comparison of fluctuation electron microscopy (FEM) data to FEM simulations of fcc Al clusters dispersed in a dense-random packed matrix is used to extract the diameter and volume fraction of the ordered regions in a Al88Y7Fe5 base glass and in glasses with 1 at.% Cu substituted for Y or Al. The size and density of nanocrystals were measured as a function of isothermal annealing time for the same alloys. The volume fraction of crystalline material grows under isothermal annealing, so the phase transformation is not purely grain coarsening, but the crystalline volume fraction is lower than the volume fraction of ordered regions in the as-quenched samples, so not all of the ordered regions act as nuclei. Changes in diameter and volume fraction of the ordered regions with alloying are correlated with changes in the crystallization temperature, nucleation rate, and nanocrystal density. No evidence for phase separation is observed, and FEM simulations from a molecular dynamics quenched structural model of similar composition do not show the features observed in experiment.