In situ synchrotron SAXS study of nanocrystallization in Zr65Ni25Ti10 metallic glass

The nanocrystallization of Zr65Ni25Ti10 metallic glass has been investigated by exploiting in situ small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) coupled with wide-angle X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. In situ, time-resolved SAXS data reveal that composition decomposition regions with a size of 15.3 ± 0.7 nm exist in the as-prepared sample and nanocrystallized products with a scale of 17.4 ± 0.7 nm occur when the sample is annealed at 615 K up to 3 min. The XRD and TEM results show that the crystallized phases are mainly face-centered cubic (fcc) Zr2Ni intermetallic compound accompanied by a few closely-packed hexagonal (hcp) ω-Zr(Ti) solid solutions and the particle size is consistent with SAXS results.