High-throughput investigation of crystal-to-glass transformation of Ti–Ni–Cu ternary alloy

A high-throughput investigation of metallic glass formation via solid-state reaction was reported in this paper. Combinatorial multilayered thin-film chips covering the entire Ti–Ni–Cu ternary system were prepared using ion beam sputtering technique. Microbeam synchrotron X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) measurements were conducted, with 1,325 data points collected from each chip, to map out the composition and the phase constitution before and after annealing at 373 K for 110 hours. The composition dependence of the crystal-to-glass transition by solid-state reaction was surveyed using this approach. The resulting composition–phase map is consistent with previously reported results. Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy (ToF-SIMS) was performed on the representative compositions to determine the inter-diffusion between layers, the result shows that the diffusion of Ti is the key factor for the crystal-to-glass transition. In addition, both layer thickness and layer sequence play important roles as well. This work demonstrates that combinatorial chip technique is an efficient way for systematic and rapid study of crystal-to-glass transition for multi-component alloy systems.