Abstract
Due to its excellent glass-forming ability (GFA), the Zr48Cu36Al8Ag8 bulk metallic glass (BMG) is of great importance in glass transition investigations and new materials development. However, due to the lack of detailed structural information, the local structure and atomic packing of this alloy is still unknown. In this work, synchrotron measurement and reverse Monte Carlo simulation are performed on the atomic configuration of a Zr-based bulk metallic glass. The local structure is characterized in terms of bond pairs and Voronoi tessellation. It is found that there are mainly two types of bond pairs in the configuration, as the body-centered cubic (bcc)-type and icosahedral (ico)-type bond pairs. On the other hand, the main polyhedra in the configuration are icosahedra and the bcc structure. That is, the bcc-type bond pairs, together with the ico-type bond pairs, form the bcc polyhedra, introducing the distortion in bcc clusters in short range. However, in the medium range, the atoms formed linear or planar structures, other than the tridimensional clusters. That is, the medium-range order in glass is of 1D or 2D structure, suggesting the imperfect ordered packing feature.
Highlights
Zr48 Cu36 Al8 Ag8 bulk metallic glass (BMG) possesses an extraordinary glass-forming ability (GFA) of up to 20 mm in the smallest dimension, as well as large stability against crystallization in the supercooled liquid region [1,2,3]
We present a reverse Monte Carlo [14] simulation of the atomic packing for the Zr48 Cu36 Al8 Ag8 BMG
All the above results imply that the final configuration is a favorable atomic structure for the Zr48 Cu36 Al8 Ag8 BMG from both the topological and energetic of view
Summary
Zr48 Cu36 Al8 Ag8 bulk metallic glass (BMG) possesses an extraordinary glass-forming ability (GFA) of up to 20 mm in the smallest dimension, as well as large stability against crystallization in the supercooled liquid region [1,2,3]. This alloy provided the opportunity to investigate the nature of glass transition in BMGs and offered the possibility to develop a new generation of engineering materials [4]. It is crucial to predict BMGs with a large GFA by the understanding of the correlation of local structures and kinetics [9]
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