Effect of the repeated melting of mother ingot on the stability of icosahedral phase precipitated from Zr-Al-Ni-Cu-Ag glass

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) shows that repeated melting of mother ingot improves the stability of icosahedral phase (I-phase) precipitated from Zr65Al7.5Ni10Cu12.5Ag5 glass. The Kissinger analysis of crystallization implies that the effective activation energies for the precipitation of I-phase and its decomposition considerably increases due to the repeated melting of mother ingot. Repeated melting of mother ingot refines ingot microstructure. Because of structure heredity, the size of the short-range orders (SROs) in the glassy alloy produced from the mother ingot with finer microstructure becomes smaller, which makes the rearrangement of atoms more clifficult, and the I-phase more stable.