About the diffusion mechanism in amorphous alloys

Abstract A diffusion mechanism in amorphous alloys have been studied using a static relaxation model Fe80B20, consisting of 105 atoms. We for the first time found that the considered amorphous alloy contains a large number of the simplexes which is a diffusion vehicle for boron and iron. The number of vacancy-simplexes is found to be 7.43 × 10− 3 per atom, from which the number of the 4-simplexes is maximum. The diffusion constants of boron and iron have been estimated. These results are well consistent with experimental data indicating that diffusion mechanism via vacancy-simplexes is valid for diffusion in amorphous alloy Fe80B20.