Reply to comments on “Structure origin of a transition of classic-to-avalanche nucleation in Zr-Cu-Al bulk metallic glasses, Acta Materialia, 149, 108 (2018)”

In the comments on “Structure origin of a transition of classic-to-avalanche nucleation in Zr-Cu-Al bulk metallic glasses, Acta Materialia, 149, 108 (2018)”, Altounian et al. argued that the avalanche type of nucleation observed in our paper is due to the presence of oxygen and other impurities. In this letter, we show that the amount of oxygen in our bulk metallic glass samples is far below the level found in ribbon samples that would trigger an explosive nucleation event. Rather, the avalanche type of nucleation reported in our study of Zr-Cu-Al bulk metallic glass is a compositional effect, where the elemental compositions were systematically varied leading to different crystalline phases.