1. Crystal-like Order Stabilizing Glasses: Structural Origin of Ultra-stable Metallic Glasses
- Author
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Lu, Zhen, Lu, Anh Khoa Augustin, Zhang, Fan, Tian, Yuan, Jiang, Jing, Wei, Daixiu, Han, Jiuhui, Gao, Qingyang, Ohara, Koji, Kato, Hidemi, Hirata, Akihiko, and Chen, Mingwei
- Subjects
Condensed Matter - Disordered Systems and Neural Networks - 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.
- Published
- 2021