title: Evidence of liquid-liquid transition in glass-forming La50Al35Ni15 melt above liquidus temperature.
abstract: Liquid-liquid transition, a phase transition of one liquid phase to another with the same composition, provides a key opportunity for investigating the relationship between liquid structures and dynamics. Here we report experimental evidences of a liquid-liquid transition in glass-forming La50Al35Ni15 melt above its liquidus temperature by (27)Al nuclear magnetic resonance including the temperature dependence of cage volume fluctuations and atomic diffusion. The observed dependence of the incubation time on the degree of undercooling is consistent with a first-order phase transition. Simulation results indicate that such transition is accompanied by the change of bond-orientational order without noticeable change in density. The temperature dependence of atomic diffusion revealed by simulations is also in agreement with experiments. These observations indicate the need of two-order parameters in describing phase transitions of liquids.
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, and State Key Laboratory of Material Processing and Die and Mould Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, China.|Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3255, USA.
authors.forename: Magdalena T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Sandor
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, and State Key Laboratory of Material Processing and Die and Mould Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, China.|Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, China.
authors.forename: Yao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Hai-Bo
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Ke
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China.
authors.forename: Hua-Ping
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China.
authors.forename: Mao-Zhi
authors.initials: MZ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Wei-Hua
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, and State Key Laboratory of Material Processing and Die and Mould Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3255, USA.
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wu