1National Center for Radiation and Technology, P. O. Box 29, Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt.
2Semiconductor Laboratory, Physics Department, Faculty of Education, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
The thermal stability and crystallization of Se-Ge and Se-Ge-M alloys (M = Cd, Ag, Pb) were studied by differential thermal analysis (DTA). A comparison of various simple quantitative methods to assess the level of stability of the glassy materials in the above mentioned system is presented. All of these methods are based on characteristic temperatures, obtained by heating of the samples in non-isothermal regime, such as the glass transition temperature, Tg, the temperature at which crystallization begins, Tin, the temperature corresponding to the maximum crystalliztion rate, Tp, and the melting temperature, Tm. In this work the thermal stability has been evaluated experimentally and correlated with the activation energies of glass transition and crystallization by this kinetic criterion and compared with those evaluated by other criteria.
