Glass forming ability of the Mo-Pd system studied by thermodynamic modeling and ion beam mixing

Glass forming ability/range of the Mo-Pd binary metal system was studied by thermodynamic calculations employing Miedema's model and ion beam mixing of multiple metal layers. The thermodynamic calculations predict a narrow composition range of 8-26 at% Pd, within which metallic glass formation is energetically favored, whereas the experimental results showed that ion beam mixing was able to synthesize metallic glasses within a composition range 13-30 at% Pd, which was well in accordance with the prediction. Besides, in the Mo70Pd30 multilayered films, with varying the irradiation dose, a dual-phase metallic glass was formed, and it could be considered as an intermediate state. The possible mechanism for the formation of the metallic glasses was also discussed in terms of the atomic collision theory.