Structural evolution in Ni–Nb and Ni–Nb–Ta liquids and glasses — A measure of liquid fragility?

The structures of Ni59.5Nb40.5, Ni62Nb38, and Ni60Nb30Ta10 liquids and glasses were studied using synchrotron high-energy X-ray diffraction. To avoid reactions between the liquids and their containers and to deeply supercool them below their equilibrium liquidus temperatures, the liquids were processed without a container using the beamline electrostatic levitation (BESL) technique. The total static structure factor, S(q), and the total pair-correlation function, g(r), were obtained for all liquid compositions over a temperature range of approximately 250 °C; S(q) and g(r) were measured for the corresponding glasses at room temperature. All of the S(q)s have a shoulder on the high-q side of the second peak; this becomes more pronounced as the liquid is supercooled, and is most prominent in the glass. Based on a Honeycutt–Andersen analysis of the atomic configurations obtained from Reverse Monte Carlo fits to the total structure factors obtained from the scattering data, icosahedral short-range order (ISRO) is dominant in all liquids and becomes particularly pronounced in the glasses. No correlation is noted, however, between the amount of ISRO and easy glass formability. Structural features show evidence for an acceleration of ordering in the supercooled liquid above the glass transition temperature, consistent with the behavior expected for fragile liquids. This suggests that scattering data can provide a new method to assess liquid fragility, which is typically obtained from the temperature behavior of the viscosity near the glass transition temperature.