Local organization and atomic clustering in multicomponent amorphous steels

The characteristics of atom packing in multicomponent metallic alloys with distinct short- and medium-range order (SMRO) are notoriously difficult to provide as the local structure is made up of multiple overlapping pair correlations. In the case of binary glasses, several cluster models have been proposed that can describe the SMRO well going beyond models of dense random packing of hard spheres. By combining the pair density function analysis of neutron-diffraction data and modeling using ab initio computational techniques, the tendency for local atomic clustering is investigated and properties of multicomponent bulk Fe78-x-yTMxREy(C22-zBz) amorphous alloys [transition metal (TM) and rare earth (RE)] are studied going beyond simple binary systems. The results are relevant to most bulk metallic glass forming alloys with more than one kind of solute ion.