Crystal-like Order Stabilizing Glasses: Structural Origin of Ultra-stable Metallic Glasses
Abstract
Glasses are featured with a disordered amorphous structure, being opposite to crystals that are constituted by periodic lattices. In this study we report that the exceptional thermodynamic and kinetic stability of an ultra-stable binary ZrCu metallic glass, fabricated by high-temperature physical vapor deposition, originates from ubiquitous crystal-like medium range order (MRO) constituted by Voronoi polyhedron ordering with well-defined local translational symmetry beyond nearest atomic neighbors. The crystal-like MRO significantly improves the thermodynamic and kinetic stability of the glass, which is in opposition to the conventional wisdom that crystal-like order deteriorates the stability and forming ability of metallic glasses. This study unveils the structural origin of ultra-stable metallic glasses and shines a light on the intrinsic correlation of local atomic structure ordering with glass transition of metallic glasses.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.2111.02606,
title = {Crystal-like Order Stabilizing Glasses: Structural Origin of Ultra-stable Metallic Glasses},
author = {Zhen Lu and Anh Khoa Augustin Lu and Fan Zhang and Yuan Tian and Jing Jiang and Daixiu Wei and Jiuhui Han and Qingyang Gao and Koji Ohara and Hidemi Kato and Akihiko Hirata and Mingwei Chen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.02606},
year = {2021}
}