Abnormal viscosity changes in high-temperature metallic melts

Abstract

The viscosity of high-temperature metallic melt, which is an important index for evaluating dynamics of liquid melt, is one of the basic physical properties. It not only influences the mold-filling capacity of melting metal in traditional casting techniques, but also exhibits more distinct influence on the fabrication of advanced material, such as metallic glass. According to the variation tendency of viscosity with temperature in alloy melt, the fragility of superheated melt could be obtained, which has proved to correlate with the ability of alloy to form glass. Besides, the viscosity of alloy well above the liquidus temperature also plays a key role in probing into the characteristic of liquid-liquid phase transition, the fragile-to-strong transition phenomenon, how the potential energy landscape evolves during cooling, etc. It has been generally accepted that the viscosity of metallic melt at high temperatures increases with temperature decreasing and could be fitted by an Arrhenius curve in the whole temperature range. However, recently more and more studies show that the viscosity of metallic melt cannot be fitted by only one Arrhenius curve. Instead, there exists at least one specific temperature below which the viscosity data begins to deviate from the Arrhenius curve at high temperature during cooling. These data could be described by another Arrhenius curve. In order to in depth understand this phenomenon, in this paper we summarize the viscosity data of different metallic melts in the literature. On the basis of introducing the method of detecting high-temperature melt viscosity, we discuss comprehensively the changing tendency of viscosity with temperature and the characteristics of abnormal viscosity changes in pure metal, binary and multivariate alloys well above the liquidus temperature. It is found that the abnormal viscosity changes generally occur in alloys that could form the types of intermetallic compounds. The abnormal viscosity change in metallic melt is accompanied with exothermic or endothermic effect, depending on alloy system, and reflects the existence of liquid-liquid transition well above the liquidus temperature. Besides, such an abnormal change of viscosity influences the ability to form metallic glass liquids. Although the abnormal dynamic change of metallic melt hints the existence of complexity of structural change in liquid during cooling, what is the key factor underlying this phenomenon remains a mystery. By combining the advanced experimental techniques such as high-energy X-ray diffraction and neutron scattering with the computer simulation method, this problem may be understood further. Besides, the relation between viscosity abnormity and the phase diagram is another problem that deserves to be noticed in the future.