Ab initio molecular dynamics simulation of the atom packing and density of Al-Ni amorphous alloys

Al-Ni alloys have better glass forming ability (GFA) than other Al-based alloys. However, the relationship among the atomic arrangement, glass transition, packing density and composition hasn’t been systematically studied. In this paper the ab initio molecular dynamics simulation (AIMD) was performed on the atom packing and density of AlxNi100−x (x=80, 83, 85, 86, 87 and 90) alloys. The pair correlation function and Voronoi tessellation indicated that there are obvious topological and chemical short-range orders in these alloys. The topological structure consists of Al-centered icosahedra like and Ni-centered tri-capped trigonal prism (TTP) like polyhedra. There is strong chemical short-range ordering between Al and Ni atoms indicated by the bond-length of Al-Ni pair shorter than the sum of the radii of Al and Ni atoms, which increases with the increasing of Ni content. It is shown that the densities of amorphous alloys don’t agree with the linear law with a peak at x=85. Based on the features of the structure and density, it is concluded that Al-Ni alloys at x=84–86 have high GFA, which can be extended to multi-component Al-based alloys.