title: Five-fold symmetry as indicator of dynamic arrest in metallic glass-forming liquids.
abstract: With sufficient high cooling rates, a variety of liquids, including metallic melts, will cross a glass transition temperature and solidify into glass accompanying a marked increase of the shear viscosity in approximately 17 orders of magnitude. Because of the intricate atomic structure and dynamic behaviours of liquid, it is yet difficult to capture the underlying structural mechanism responsible for the marked slowing down during glass transition, which impedes deep understanding of the formation and nature of glasses. Here, we report that a universal structural indicator, the average degree of five-fold local symmetry, can well describe the slowdown dynamics during glass transition. A straightforward relationship between structural parameter and viscosity (or α-relaxation time) is introduced to connect the dynamic arrest and the underlying structural evolution. This finding would be helpful in understanding the long-standing challenges of glass transition mechanism in the structural perspective.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190 China.
authors.forename: Y C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Beijing Key Laboratory of Opto-electronic Functional Materials and Micro-nano Devices, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872 China.
authors.forename: F X
authors.initials: FX
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Beijing Key Laboratory of Opto-electronic Functional Materials and Micro-nano Devices, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872 China.
authors.forename: M Z
authors.initials: MZ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190 China.
authors.forename: H Y
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190 China.
authors.forename: W H
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Wang