Abstract:
The structural properties of the simulated CuαZr1−α glassy alloys are studied in the wide range of the copper concentration to clarify the impact of the composition on the number density of the icosahedral clusters. Both bond orientational order parameters and Voronoi tessellation methods are used to identify these clusters. Our analysis shows that abundance of the icosahedral clusters and the chemical composition of these clusters are essentially nonmonotonic versus and demonstrate local extrema. That qualitatively explains the existence of pinpoint compositions of high glass-forming ability observing in CuZr alloys. Finally, it has been shown that Voronoi method overestimates drastically the abundance of the icosahedral clusters in comparison with the bond orientational order parameters one.
MD simulations was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant # 14-50-00124). Structural analysis was supported by Russian Science Foundation (grant # 14-12-01185). BAK was supported by the A*MIDEX grant (# ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02) funded by the French Government “Investissements d’Avenir” program managed by the French National Research Agency (ANR).
Citation:
B. A. Klumov, R. E. Ryltsev, N. M. Chtchelkachev, “Simulated Cu-Zr glassy alloys: the impact of composition on icosahedral order”, Pis'ma v Zh. Èksper. Teoret. Fiz., 104:8 (2016), 568–569; JETP Letters, 104:8 (2016), 546–551