Annealing metallic glasses above Tg in order to accelerate the relaxation process in molecular dynamics simulations

Abstract

To bridge the gap between nano- and micro-seconds molecular dynamics simulations and milliseconds timescale phenomena in metallic glasses remains an area of active research. Through systematic control of the annealing parameters, we have been able to simulate metallic glasses resembling structures usually obtained by quenching at cooling rates used in the melt spinning process. Density, local order, and local entropy calculations predict metallic glasses with structures prepared at cooling rates orders of magnitude lower than those typically realized in atomistic modeling. Hence, annealing above Tg is an alternative to melt quenching simulations and offers the prospect of modeling well relaxed glassy structures that were not achievable before in molecular dynamics simulations.