The structural asymmetry of metallic melts changing with temperature reflects the fragility

Abstract In the present study, the fragility, skewness, or asymmetry of the pair correlation functions (PCFs) first peak, as well as bond length deviation of nearest neighbors of CuxZr100-x (x = 36, 45, 50, 55, 64, 72, 80) melts were investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. We found that the fragility and the rate of structural asymmetry changing with temperature have a strong dependence, demonstrating that more fragile liquids should have larger structural asymmetry changing rate in relatively high temperature range. The value of skewness or asymmetry for PCFs and its changing rate with temperature reflect the dynamic heterogeneity of melt, those relatively slow dynamics atoms present a higher structural symmetry and a larger changing rate of asymmetry with temperature.