Amorphous metallic alloys as mesophases

Abstract An attempt to employ the theory of thermodynamic stability to describe the properties of liquid-quenched amorphous metallic alloys has been made. Some analogies concerning the properties of amorphous metallic alloys and on the other hand of liquid crystals and polymers have been established. There is a distinct likeness in the behaviour of the temperature dependencies of thermal stability coefficients T / C p (where T is the temperature and C p the specific heat capacity at constant pressure) for these objects. This enables us to consider amorphous metallic alloys as a new class of intermediate phases (“mesophases”).