In situ formed two-phase metallic glass with surface fractal microstructure

The alloy La27.5Zr27.5Al25Cu10Ni10 was found to phase separate during quenching from the melt into (La–Cu)-rich and (Zr–Ni)-rich glassy phases with compositions close to those of Zr–Ni–Al and La–Cu–Al bulk metallic glasses. As-quenched samples consist of two amorphous phases in spherical shape with a wide range of length scales from tens of micrometers to a few nanometers. Several self-similar generations of spheres in spheres were observed using scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Small angle X-ray scattering results show an exponential dependence to the power of −3.4 of the intensity on the scattering vector, indicating a surface fractal microstructure of dimension 2.6. The selected area diffraction patterns obtained from two-phase regions show two clearly distinguishable halo rings and the high resolution electron microscope image shows isotropic maze patterns with two different length scales corresponding to the difference in the average atomic distance of the two amorphous phases.