2. Preparation of amorphous metallic materials

2.1 Cooling rate and amorphization capacity

The first amorphous metal alloys obtained by rapid quenching were developed in a device devised by P. Duwez's team, where a droplet of liquid alloy is sprayed by a jet of gas, before crashing onto a cooled copper ramp (figure 9 ). The first samples, Au-Si, Pd-Si, were obtained in the form of particles of a few mg. Major efforts were then required to find rapid quenching methods, producing appreciable quantities of material, and then industrial-scale quantities.