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Structural origin of the different glass-forming abilities in ZrCu and ZrNi metallic glasses

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Abstract

The microstructures of Zr70Cu30 and Zr70Ni30 metallic glasses (MGs) were investigated via the synchrotron radiation techniques combined with the reverse Monte-Carlo simulations. Although Cu and Ni are neighbor elements in the periodic table and their atomic radii are almost the same in length, it is found that atomic- and cluster-scale structural differences occur between these two Zr-based MGs. In particular, the relatively regular clusters caused by the narrow distributions of atomic separations and bond angles are detected in Zr70Cu30. This is the structural origin of the different glass-forming abilities in ZrCu and ZrNi alloys. This work has implications for understanding of the glass-forming mechanism in this class of glassy materials.

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank HASYLAB in Germany and SSRF in China for the use of the advanced synchrotron radiation facilities. Financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 10805027), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK2008397), and the NUAA Research Funding (Grant No. NS2010168) are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210016, People’s Republic of China

    Gu-Qing Guo, Liang Yang, Cai-Long Huang & Da Chen

  2. International Center for New-Structured Materials, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, People’s Republic of China

    Lian-Yi Chen

  3. Laboratory of New-Structured Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, People’s Republic of China

    Lian-Yi Chen

  4. Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, People’s Republic of China

    Lian-Yi Chen

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  1. Gu-Qing Guo
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  2. Liang Yang
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Correspondence to Liang Yang.

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Guo, GQ., Yang, L., Huang, CL. et al. Structural origin of the different glass-forming abilities in ZrCu and ZrNi metallic glasses. Journal of Materials Research 26, 2098–2102 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2011.216

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