Amorphous phase formation in the Cu₃₆Zr₅₉A_l5 and Cu₄₈Zr₄₃A_l9 ternary alloys studied by molecular dynamics

Amorphous alloys presents better mechanical and physical properties than its crystalline counterparts. However, there is a scarce understanding on structure - properties relationship in this class of materials. This paper presents the results of the molecular dynamics application to obtain an atomistic description of melting, solidification and the glass forming ability in the ternary Cu₃₆Zr₅₉A_l5 and Cu₄₈Zr₄₃A_l9 alloys. In the study we used the EAM potential and different cooling rates, β = 0.1, 1 and 100 K/ps to form the amorphous phase in a system consisting of 32,000 atoms by using the free code LAMMPS. The solidus and liquidus temperatures, on a heating rate of the 5 K/ps, were obtained. Also, on the cooling down step, it was observed that the glass transition temperature (T_g) decreases as cooling rate increases. The structural evolution was analyzed through the radial distribution functions and Voronoi polyhedra. Furthermore, it was determined the evolution of viscosity upper T_g, as well as the fragility (m) parameter for each amorphous alloy. The thermal parameters of the simulation obtained are compared with those of the experiments. (author)