Liquid-Liquid Transition in Bulk Metallic Glass-Forming Liquids

In the last two decades, polymorphic phase transitions within the liquid state \(^1\) , called liquid-liquid transitions (LLT), have been found in a considerable number of very different liquids such as water [1, 2], SiO2 [3], BeF2 [4] or triphenyl phosphide [5]. Therefore, it is not surprising that the LLT transitions have been reported in metallic liquids as well. This is expected since polymorphic transformations in metallic systems are a very common phenomenon even in the solid state. One example is entropy-induced polymorphic transitions between disorder and order in crystalline metals, which lead to superstructures of fcc or bcc, e.g. in Au-Cu or CuZn alloys.