Microscopic Calculations of the Stability of Metallic Glasses

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Abstract
We show that metallic glasses are stabilized by the close matching between the minima in the interionic potentials and the maxima of the partial pair-distribution functions. We use an ab initio pseudopotential method to calculate the interionic potentials for transition-metal-free glasses (Mg-Zn, Ca-Mg, and Ca-Al). The amorphous structure is determined using cluster relaxation and thermodynamic variational techniques. Our theory demonstrates that there is a close relation between glass formation and the formation of topologically close-packed intermetallic compounds.