A polymer model for metal alloy glasses

Some phenomenological parallels between certain metal alloy glasses, namely, those composed of pure metal and pure network-forming elements which are formed by melt quenching, are examined from the viewpoint of a polymer model. The applicability of the description of certain amorphous metal alloys in terms of polymer chains, backbones, side groups, and plasticizers is presented, and the role of the pure metal both as side group of, and as plasticizer to, the polymer-like chains is discussed. The available structural data, as well as the relevant data for thermodynamic and viscoelastic properties of the liquid and glassy states of these particular glass-forming metial alloys, are shown not to be inconsistent with the predictions of the model. Correlations of the glass temperature and of the efficiency of glass temperature depression with atomic size for glass-forming binary metal alloys appear to be predictable from analogies to plasticizer effects in polymer chemistry.