Defect-induced ordering and disordering in metallic glasses

Abstract: On the basis of shear modulus measurements on a Pt-based glass, we calculated temperature dependence of the defect concentration c using the Interstitialcy theory. This temperature dependence is compared with temperature dependence of the normalized full width at half maximum (FWHM) gamma of the first peak of the structure factor S(q) for the same glass available in the literature. It is found that above the glass transition temperature Tg linearly increases with c in the same way for both initial and relaxed (preannealed) samples providing the evidence of defect-induced disordering in the supercooled liquid region independent of glass thermal prehistory. For both states of the samples, the derivative d(gamma)/dc is close to unity. Below Tg, the interrelation between gamma and c is entirely different for initial and relaxed samples. In the former case, strong defect-induced ordering upon approaching Tg is observed while relaxed samples do not reveal any clear ordering/disordering. Possible reasons for these observations are discussed. To further investigate the relationship between the normalized FWHM and defect concentration, we performed molecular dynamic simulation of gamma(c)-dependence in a high-entropy FeNiCrCoCu model glass. It is found that gamma also linearly increases with c while the derivative d(gamma)/dc is again close to unity just as in the case of Pt-based glass.