Data-driven discovery of a universal indicator for metallic glass forming ability

Despite the importance of glass forming ability as a major alloy characteristic, it is poorly understood and its quantification has been experimentally laborious and computationally challenging. Here, we uncover that the glass forming ability of an alloy is represented in its amorphous structure far away from equilibrium, which can be exposed by conventional X-ray diffraction. Specifically, we fabricated roughly 5,700 alloys from 12 alloy systems and characterized the full-width at half-maximum, Δq, of the first diffraction peak in the X-ray diffraction pattern. A strong correlation between high glass forming ability and a large Δq was found. This correlation indicates that a large dispersion of structural units comprising the amorphous structure is the universal indicator for high metallic glass formation. When paired with combinatorial synthesis, the correlation enhances throughput by up to 100 times compared to today's state-of-the-art combinatorial methods and will facilitate the discovery of bulk metallic glasses.