APL Materials (May 2024)

Impact of sulfur addition on the structure and dynamics of Ni–Nb alloy melts

  • Nicolai Grund,
  • Dirk Holland-Moritz,
  • Saba Khademorezaian,
  • Lucas P. Kreuzer,
  • Nico Neuber,
  • Lucas M. Ruschel,
  • Hendrik Voigt,
  • Johanna Wilden,
  • Fan Yang,
  • Soham Banerjee,
  • Malte Blankenburg,
  • Ann-Christin Dippel,
  • Jan Peter Embs,
  • Sergiy Divinski,
  • Ralf Busch,
  • Andreas Meyer,
  • Gerhard Wilde

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0205058
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 5
pp. 051126 – 051126-7

Abstract

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We investigated the change in the structure and dynamics of a Ni–Nb bulk metallic glass upon sulfur addition on both microscopic and macroscopic scales. With the sulfur concentration of 3 at. %, where the composition Ni58Nb39S3 exhibits the best glass forming ability in the investigated sulfur concentration range, both the equilibrium and undercooled melt dynamics remain almost unchanged. Only in the glassy state does sulfur seem to result in mass transport less decoupled to the viscosity of the undercooled liquid, where the measured Ag tracer diffusion coefficient is slower in the ternary alloy. With the structural disorder introduced by the alloying sulfur, the improved glass forming ability is attributed to geometrical frustration, where crystal nucleation requires a depletion of sulfur and hence long range diffusion, as long as no primary sulfur-containing crystalline phase is involved.