Amorphous metallic alloys have essentially a Short Range Order. Its measurement will help understand the process of amorphization of the materials.
What is meant by the words "to understand the process of amorphization of materials"?
look for total scattering studies (aka PDF analysis). That's the technique you are looking for
X ray scattering or neutron scattering (if you have enough matter) can unambigously prove that your sample is amorphous
I can add: To evaluate the chemical short-range order
1. FIM and Three Dimensional Atom Probe (3DAP) http://www.nims.go.jp/apfim/3DAP.html
2. If there is iron in the alloy - Mossbauer
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225237966_Short-range_order_in_amorphous_ferromagnetic_Fe-B_alloys
3. If there is cobalt in the alloy - NMR
Article Short-range order in amorphous ferromagnetic Fe-B alloys
Short range order usually refers to alloy crystalline systems and describes for example the tendency of agglomeration of B atoms in an A-B alloy. For liquids and amorphous alloys more suitable discription is the pair correlation function which is obtained by neutron or X-ray scattering experiments as suggested above.
Any technique that carries information about nearest neighbor correlations can be used. Isotope substituted neutron scattering, pair distribution functions from X-ray scattering are good options. But if you have multiple elements (more than two) in your metallic glass and if you would like the partial radial distribution of atomic neighbors around each of the species, then you should do EXAFS (and/or its analog using electron energy loss, EXELFS).
If you are interested, I annually did quite of bit of short-range order measurements in metallic glasses. I hope these papers and the references within are useful:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7336758_Atomic_packing_and_short-to-medium-range_order_in_metallic_glasses?ev=prf_pub
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255901558_Sub-nanoscale_Structural_Origins_of_the_Stability_ofthe_Pd-Ni-P_Model_Bulk_Metallic_Glass_A_Review?ev=prf_pub
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8613070_Icosahedral_short-range_order_in_amorphous_alloys?ev=prf_pub
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8954574_The_structure_of_a_metallic_glass_system_using_EXELFS_and_EXAFS_as_complementary_probes?ev=prf_pub
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232820787_Extended_energy-loss_fine_structure_analysis_of_3d_transition_metals_using_L_ionization_edges?ev=prf_pub
Article Atomic Packing and Short-to-Medium-Range Order in Metallic Glasses
Chapter Sub-nanoscale Structural Origins of the Stability ofthe Pd-N...
Article Icosahedral Short-Range Order in Amorphous Alloys
Article The structure of a metallic glass system using EXELFS and EX...
Article Extended energy-loss fine structure analysis of 3d transitio...
I confirm that an excellent method is neutron and X ray scattering
See for exemple many papers of Soubeyroux with neutrons.
Kaban et al did similar measurements with X rays (unpublished)
We made measurements by electronic transport to measure the phase changes, but only structure measurements allow to identify if we have an amorphous or a polycristal. TEM and SEM can also be used
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Materials Science
- Material Characterization