Morphological aspects of crystallization of chalcogenide glasses obtained by rapid cooling from the liquid state

Abstract

The results of a study of growth morphology during crystallization of amorphous tellurium alloys are presented in this paper. By comparison with a process of precipitation from a supersaturated solid solution it was shown that a number of common features exist between the crystallization of amorphous materials and that from the liquid phase. It is proposed in the discussion that glass-to-crystal transition is an intermediate transition between the crystallization from the liquid phase and the non-coherent precipitation from supersaturated solid solution. It was also shown that the magnitude of the elastic strain energyn·Δg _s depends mainly on the differences between the density of amorphous phase and that of the crystal and may be described by means of an equation of the type: {ie281-01}