2007 Volume 48 Issue 7 Pages 1739-1742
In the present work we propose a new approach for predicting the best glass-former composition(s) in multi-component metallic glasses. By applying the λ criterion, a topological instability criterion proposed to predict the crystallisation behaviour of Al-based systems, we show that it is also successfully possible to reproduce compositional ranges where binary and ternary bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) have recently been obtained. Our results indicate that the good glass-former composition(s) lie(s) within fields of mutual and simultaneous topological instability of all the crystalline phases competing with glassy phase.