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Vitrification of a monatomic metallic liquid

Nature volume 448, pages 787–790 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Although the majority of glasses in use in technology are complex mixtures of oxides or chalcogenides, there are numerous examples of pure substances—‘glassformers’—that also fail to crystallize during cooling. Most glassformers are organic molecular systems, but there are important inorganic examples too1,2, such as silicon dioxide and elemental selenium (the latter being polymeric). Bulk metallic glasses can now be made3; but, with the exception of Zr50Cu50 (ref. 4), they require multiple components to avoid crystallization during normal liquid cooling. Two-component ‘metglasses’ can often be achieved by hyperquenching, but this has not hitherto been achieved with a single-component system. Glasses form when crystal nucleation rates are slow, although the factors that create the slow nucleation conditions are not well understood. Here we apply the insights gained in a recent molecular dynamics simulation study5 to create conditions for successful vitrification of metallic liquid germanium. Our results also provide micrographic evidence for a rare polyamorphic transition preceding crystallization of the diamond cubic phase.

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Figure 1: Optical and electron micrographs of vitrified Ge.
Figure 2: Comparisons of structure factors for vitreous and liquid states of Ge from laboratory and molecular dynamics simulation studies.
Figure 3: Relation of temperature–pressure phase diagram for Ge to the temperature– λ potential diagram for Stillinger–Weber systems.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Benmore and Q. Mei for the attempted in situ studies of melt-quenched samples at the Argonne APS. We acknowledge the allocation of computer time at the Center for High Performance Computing at the University of Utah, where the simulations on Ge were carried out. The cooperation of D. Matyushov and his group (whose Arizona State University computing facilities were used for the Si simulations) is also appreciated. We also thank our NSF-CRC colleagues P. Debenedetti, G. Stanley and P. Rossky for discussions. This work was supported by NSF grants from the Chemistry CRC (to C.A.A.), the DMR Solid State Chemistry (to C.A.A.), the NSF Chemistry (to J.L.Y.), the Carnegie/DOE Alliance Center (DOE-NNSA CDAC) (to J.L.Y.) and the Swarnajayanti Fellowship, DST, India (to S.S.). The TEM studies depended on the John M. Cowley Center for High Resolution Electron Microscopy.

Author Contributions C.A.A., V.M. and S.S. conceived the project as part of previous work5. J.L.Y. recommended and directed the DAC investigation, M.H.B. and E.S. executed the sample mounting, laser pulse melting, and Raman characterization experiments, V.C.S. and M.H.B. performed the TEM studies, V.M. carried out both preliminary Si and later Ge molecular dynamics simulations, and wrote the results analysis given in the Supplementary Information, and C.A.A. wrote the paper (with advice and criticism from all co-authors).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-1604, USA,

    M. H. Bhat, V. Molinero, E. Soignard, V. C. Solomon, J. L. Yarger & C. A. Angell

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-0850, USA,

    V. Molinero

  3. J. Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Jakkur Campus, Bangalore 560064, India

    S. Sastry

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  1. M. H. Bhat
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Correspondence to C. A. Angell.

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Bhat, M., Molinero, V., Soignard, E. et al. Vitrification of a monatomic metallic liquid. Nature 448, 787–790 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06044

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