The range of the magnitude of the liquid viscosity as a function of the temperature (T) is one of the most impressive of any physical property, changing by approximately 17 orders of magnitude from its extrapolated value at infinite temperature to th
at at the glass transition. We present experimental measurements of containerlessly processed metallic liquids that reveal that the ratio of the viscosity to its extrapolated infinite temperature value follows a universal function of Tcoop/T. The temperature Tcoop corresponds to the onset of cooperative motion and is strongly correlated with the glass transition temperature. On average the extrapolated infinite temperature viscosity is found to be nh, where h is Plancks constant and n is the particle number density. A surprising universality in the viscosity of metallic liquids and its relation to the glass transition is demonstrated.
The elementary excitations of vibration in solids are phonons. But in liquids phonons are extremely short-lived and marginalized. In this letter through classical and ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations of the liquid state of various metallic sy
stems we show that different excitations, the local configurational excitations in the atomic connectivity network, are the elementary excitations in high temperature metallic liquids. We also demonstrate that the competition between the configurational excitations and phonons determines the so-called crossover phenomenon in liquids. These discoveries open the way to the explanation of various complex phenomena in liquids, such as fragility and the rapid increase in viscosity toward the glass transition, in terms of these excitations.
