Abstract
Since the discovery of bulk metal glasses obtainable by moderate quenching rates from the liquid state, more attention has been given to nucleation phenomena in multicomponent liquid alloys. Among the parameters controlling the frequency of nucleation in the highly supercooled range of the melt, the liquid-crystal interface energy is known to be particularly significant. Almost no experimental data on these energies are available when bulk glass-forming liquid alloys are involved. This work is focused on the study of the effect of liquid-crystal partitioning and of chemical short-range order (CSRO) in the liquid alloy on the dynamic liquid-crystal interface energy. Application to ternary liquid glass formers Zr-Cu-Pd is presented. The broken-bonds method is applied to evaluate the excess interface energy between binary and ternary liquid-crystal systems. The Warren-Cowley order parameters, used to quantify CSRO in the liquid alloy, are evaluated on the basis of the Guggenheim quasichemical model. A specific ternary effect on the dynamic liquid-crystal interface energy is demonstrated; its consequence for crystalline nucleation is discussed.