Confined Metallic Liquids: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study

We simulated melting and vitrification process of Cu50Zr50 and Al when confined in different types of wall in nanometer length-scale. The interaction between the liquids and the walls are via Lennard-Jones(LJ) potential.We changed steeply the ε parameters. Wetting condition between the wall and the liquid transformed from the non-wetting to wetting. We also studied the effects of different thickness on confined Cu50Zr50 and confined Al in melting process and vitrification process.Confined Cu50Zr50 with thickness of 32.5? is researched. It was found that the melting temperature(Tm) first increases with ε when ε increases from 0.001 to 0.04 eV then decreases with ε. HoweVer, in vitrification process, the glass transition temperature(Tg) shows only a slight increase with ε when ε increase from 0.001 to 0.04 eV and then keeps constant. We also simulated melting and vitrification process of confined Cu50Zr50 when thicknesses changed from 48.75 ?, 65 ? to 97.5 ?, it was found that Tm increases and Tg keeps constant with the increases of thickness.Confined Al with thickness of 40.5? is researched. The Tm of confined Al first increase and then decrease as the energy parameter ? is increased from 0.01 eV to 0.8eV, and shows the approximate crossover point at ε= 0.1eV. Crystallization temperature(Tx) of confined Al shows a rapid increase with ε when ε increase from 0.01 to 0.1 eV and then slight decreases with ε. We studied the thickness effect by changing the thicknesses of Al from 60.45? to 121.5?, it was found that Tm increases and Tx decreases with the increases of thickness.