Formation of NiZr₂ Binary Metallic Glass: Experimental and Molecular Dynamics Analyses

The local atomic structure of an amorphous NiZr₂ alloy is identified by using x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and differential scanning calorimeter. Based on the experimental results, molecular dynamics simulation is performed to investigate the glass formation of liquid NiZr₂ alloy. Some
relevant features of the pair correlation functions are in good agreement with those obtained by experiment. The pair analysis parameters are calculated, suggesting that there exist icosahedral ordering, four-fold symmetrical bipyramid and triangular-faced polyhedral units in the amorphous NiZr₂ structure. The result is beneficial to open avenues toward the understanding of fundamental theoretical problems of glass formation of simple binary alloys.