Homophase-fluctuation-mediated mechanism of nucleation in multicomponent liquid alloys and glass-forming ability

Recently, a homophase-fluctuation-mediated (HFM) mechanism of homogeneous nucleation, where concentration fluctuations in the liquid and structure fluctuations are considered as separate events, has been proposed and applied to binary liquids showing a tendency to phase separation, In the present contribution, the HFM mechanism is generalized to multicomponent liquid alloys. The thermodynamic and kinetic analysis leads to an expression of the frequency of nucleation where the pre-exponential factor appears to be lowered when the number of components is increased. This approach helps to quantify the so-called confusion principle often quoted in the literature to explain the enhanced glass-forming ability shown by some multicomponent liquid alloys. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.