Synthesis of Cu mono-component metallic glass by the deposition on amorphous SiO$_2$ substrate: a molecular dynamics study

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to compare Cu metallic glasses formed by vapor deposition and melt quenching, revealing differences in structure and stability.

Contribution

It demonstrates the formation of Cu metallic glass via PVD and compares its properties with melt-quenched glass, highlighting the effects of deposition on stability.

Findings

PVD-produced Cu glass has higher density.

PVD Cu glass exhibits lower potential energy.

Both methods produce similar radial distribution functions.

Abstract

In this work, we simulated the physical vapor deposition (PVD) process of Cu atoms on the amorphous SiO$_2$ substrate. The resulting Cu thin layer exhibit amorphous structure. The Cu liquid quenching from 2000 K to 50 K was also simulated with different cooling rate to form the Cu metallic glass for comparison. The Cu glasses from the two different processes (PVD and quenching) revealed the same radial distribution function but different local structure from the Voronoi tessellation analysis. The PVD glass exhibit higher densities and lower potential energy compared with the melt-quenched counterpart, which corresponded to the properties of ultrastable glasses.