Structural behaviour of Pd40Cu30Ni10P20 metallic glass under high pressure

The structural behaviour of Pd40Cu30Ni10P20 bulk metallic glass as a function of hydrostatic pressure up to 47.4 GPa was investigated by means of in situ high energy synchrotron X-ray diffraction patterns. Monotonic changes are observed in the diffraction data without any indication of a phase transition. In real space all maxima of the atomic pair correlation function including the nearest neighbour distance are decreasing and scale with pressure. The volume as function of hydrostatic pressure is extracted from the diffraction data. For the largest hydrostatic pressure of 47.4 GPa the volume is reduced by 18%. The bulk modulus B0 = 178 GPa was calculated from the diffraction data. The dependence of volume on pressure of Pd40Cu30Ni10P20 metallic glass can be well described by the Birch–Murnaghan equation of state.