Thermal analysis and non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of Ag–Ga2Te3–SnTe telluride glasses

In this paper, the microstructure evolutions and crystallization kinetics of the newly developed Agx-[(Ga2Te3)34(SnTe)66]100−x (x = 6, 8 and 10%) telluride glasses were comprehensively investigated under non-isothermal conditions. The microscopic structure of the investigated samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and the selected area electron diffraction (SAED). The crystalline products were identified as the SnTe phase (primary crystalline phase) and Ga6SnTe10 phase. The exothermic crystallization process for any investigated samples was actually on the envelope of two overlapped peaks and could be assigned to the first crystallization event of SnTe precipitation and followed by the second crystallization event of Ga6SnTe10 phase. The crystallization mechanism and activation energies were estimated by Matusita–Sakka model under continuous heating based on the differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). For the first crystallization event, the Avrami exponent n values for each of the three investigated samples was approximately 3, suggesting the crystallization occurred through the two-dimensional growth with increasing number of nucleation. The values of n for the second crystallization event of Ga6SnTe10 phase were close to 4, indicating three-dimensional growth with a increasing number of nuclei. The activation energy Ec for both the first and second crystallization events was gradually decreased as the Ag content increased.