Abstract
A metastable liquid may exist under supercooling, sustaining the liquid below the melting point such as supercooled water and silicon. It may also exist as a transient state in solid–solid transitions, as demonstrated in recent studies of colloidal particles and glass-forming metallic systems. One important question is whether a crystalline solid may directly melt into a sustainable metastable liquid. By thermal heating, a crystalline solid will always melt into a liquid above the melting point. Here we report that a high-pressure crystalline phase of bismuth can melt into a metastable liquid below the melting line through a decompression process. The decompression-induced metastable liquid can be maintained for hours in static conditions, and transform to crystalline phases when external perturbations, such as heating and cooling, are applied. It occurs in the pressure–temperature region similar to where the supercooled liquid Bi is observed. Akin to supercooled liquid, the pressure-induced metastable liquid may be more ubiquitous than we thought.
Highlights
A metastable liquid may exist under supercooling, sustaining the liquid below the melting point such as supercooled water and silicon
The metastable liquid can be kept for several hours at static condition until external perturbations are applied such as heating or cooling, resulting in transformation to crystalline phases
Bi-II transforms to Bi-III at B2.8 GPa, a tetrahedral host–guest structure (Supplementary Fig. 1)
Summary
A metastable liquid may exist under supercooling, sustaining the liquid below the melting point such as supercooled water and silicon. The decompression-induced metastable liquid can be maintained for hours in static conditions, and transform to crystalline phases when external perturbations, such as heating and cooling, are applied. It occurs in the pressure–temperature region similar to where the supercooled liquid Bi is observed. Levitas et al.[4,5] proposed a transient melting process that occurs in a solid–solid phase transformation at temperatures significantly below the melting temperature due to internal stress Such transient liquid has been experimentally observed using polymeric colloidal systems[6,7,8], where the particles mimic atoms. The metastable liquid can be kept for several hours at static condition until external perturbations are applied such as heating or cooling, resulting in transformation to crystalline phases
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