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Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
'Crystal Genes' in Metallic Liquids and Glasses
Yang Sun1,2, Feng Zhang2, Zhuo Ye2
1Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
Abstract:
We analyze the underlying structural order that transcends liquid, glass and crystalline states in metallic systems. A genetic algorithm is applied to search for the most common energetically favorable packing motifs in crystalline structures. These motifs are in turn compared to the observed packing motifs in the actual liquid or glass structures using a cluster-alignment method. Using this method, we have revealed the nature of the short-range order in Cu64Zr36 glasses. More importantly, we identified a novel structural order in the Al90Sm10 system. In addition, our approach brings new insight into understanding the origin of vitrification and describing mesoscopic order-disorder transitions in condensed matter systems.
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