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Updated: Mar 26, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
General 2.5 power law of metallic glasses
Qiaoshi Zeng1, Yu Lin2, Yijin Liu3
1Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, Pudong, Shanghai 201203, People's Republic of China; Department of Geological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025; High Pressure Synergetic Consortium, Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Argonne, IL 60439; qzeng@carnegiescience.edu hmao@carnegiescience.edu.
Abstract:
Metallic glass (MG) is an important new category of materials, but very few rigorous laws are currently known for defining its "disordered" structure. Recently we found that under compression, the volume (V) of an MG changes precisely to the 2.5 power of its principal diffraction peak position (1/q1). In the present study, we find that this 2.5 power law holds even through the first-order polyamorphic transition of a Ce68Al10Cu20Co2 MG. This transition is, in effect, the equivalent of a continuous "composition" change of 4f-localized "big Ce" to 4f-itinerant "small Ce," indicating the 2.5 power law is general for tuning with composition. The exactness and universality imply that the 2.5 power law may be a general rule defining the structure of MGs.
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