Thermodynamic Coffee Lecture – Exploration of fast time scales in metallic glasses and reactive metallic multilayers by chip calorimetry

Understanding the nature of transitions between the glassy, liquid and crystalline states is a major challenge in physics as well as in materials science. With the emergence of advanced fast calorimetry, based on a chip-technology, we can nowadays access shorter and shorter time scales and thus experimentally measure the thermophysical properties of materials far from equilibrium. In this talk, we build on established and new work that our group has performed with this technique at ultra-short time scale for the study of many material characteristics. Selected topics may include: TTT-diagrams near the nose for crystallization¹, study of the undercooled liquid and glass formation from the melt in metallic glass-forming systems^2,3,4, hierarchical physical aging in bulk metallic glasses⁵, as well as studies of the diffusion and reaction kinetics in reactive nanocrystalline multilayered thin films for more than 5 orders of magnitude of heating rates^6,7.

¹ M. Frey et al., Determining and modelling a complete time-temperature-transformation diagram for a Pt-based metallic glass former through combination of conventional and fast scanning calorimetry, Scripta Materialia 215 (2022) 114710. DOI: 10.1016/j.scriptamat.2022.114710.

² X. Monnier, D. Cangialosi, B. Ruta, R. Busch, I. Gallino, Vitrification decoupling from α-relaxation  in a metallic glass  Science Advances 6, eaay1454 (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay1454

³ V. Di Lisio, I. Gallino, et al., Size-dependent vitrification in metallic glasses, Nature Communication 14/1 (2023) 4698. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40417-4

⁴ W. Ma, J. Gebauer, A.K. Czerny, M. Rahimi Chegeni, I. Gallino, R. Busch, H. J. Seifert, Thermodynamic assessment of the sulfur and the nickel-sulfur systems, CALPHAD 89 (2025) 102821 DOI: 10.1016/j.calphad.2025.102821

⁵ I. Gallino, et al., Hierarchical aging pathways and reversible fragile-to-strong transition upon annealing of a metallic glass former, Acta Materialia 144 (2018) 400-410. DOI: 10.1016/j.actamat.2017.10.060.

⁶ A. Wang, I. Gallino, et al., Ultrafast formation of single phase B2 AlCoCrFeNi high entropy alloy films by reactive Ni/Al multilayers as heat source, Materials & Design 206 (2021) 109790. DOI: 10.1016/j.matdes.2021.109790

⁷ S.S. Riegler et al., Nanocalorimetry of Nanoscaled Ni/Al Multilayer Films: On the Methodology to Determine Reaction Kinetics for Highly Reactive Films, Adv. Eng. Mater. (2024) 2302279. DOI: 10.1002/adem.202302279