Thermodynamic scaling of glassy dynamics and dynamic heterogeneities in metallic glass-forming liquid

A ternary metallic glass-forming liquid is found to be not strongly correlating thermodynamically, but its average dynamics, dynamic heterogeneities including the high order dynamic correlation length, and static structure are still well described by thermodynamic scaling with the same scaling exponent γ. This may indicate that the metallic liquid could be treated as a single-parameter liquid. As an intrinsic material constant stemming from the fundamental interatomic interactions, γ is theoretically predicted from the thermodynamic fluctuations of the potential energy and the virial. Although γ is conventionally understood merely from the repulsive part of the inter-particle potentials, the strong correlation between γ and the Grüneisen parameter up to the accuracy of the Dulong-Petit approximation demonstrates the important roles of anharmonicity and attractive force of the interatomic potential in governing glass transition of metallic glassformers. These findings may shed light on how to understand metallic glass formation from the fundamental interatomic interactions.