Electronic structure and chemical short-range order in amorphous CuZr and NiZr alloys

The authors present microscopic calculations of the chemical short-range order (CSRO) in amorphous Cu x Zr 1-x alloys and Ni x Zr 1-x alloys. To simulate transition-metal amorphous alloys, they have used the Bethe lattice in which every atom is located in a FCC environment. A tight-binding Hamiltonian including sd hybridisation is used to describe the concentration dependence of electronic properties of these alloys. They correlate the CSRO with high negative heats of formation. Moreover, they present a discussion of the stability of these alloys in the glass-forming range.