No abstract

The dynamical behaviour of liquids is frequently characterized by the fragility, which can be defined from the temperature dependence of the shear viscosity, η (ref. ). For a strong liquid, the activation energy for η changes little with cooling towards the glass transition temperature, T. The change is much greater in fragile liquids, with the activation energy becoming very large near T. While fragility is widely recognized as an important concept-believed, for example, to play an important role in glass formation-the microscopic origin of fragility is poorly understood. Here, we present new experimental evidence showing that fragility reflects the strength of the repulsive part of the interatomic potential, which can be determined from the steepness of the pair distribution function near the hard-sphere cutoff. On the basis of an analysis of scattering data from ten different metallic alloy liquids, we show that stronger liquids have steeper repulsive potentials.

No abstract

In the original description of fragility, Angell (1988 J. Phys. Chem. Solids 49 863) determined the degree of fragility from the curvature on an Arrhenius plot. This paper discusses a new measurement of the fragility value. The fragility of Al-Ni-based glass-forming melts, which is seldom reported in this field, can be analysed by using data from their viscosity and thermal properties. The fragility is observed to be very high, which is in very good agreement with the low glass-forming ability of Al-Ni-based alloys.