Observation of five-fold local symmetry in liquid lead

H. Reichert (), O. Klein, H. Dosch, M. Denk, V. Honkimäki, T. Lippmann and G. Reiter
Additional contact information
H. Reichert: Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung
O. Klein: Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung
H. Dosch: Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung
M. Denk: Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung
V. Honkimäki: European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ESRF
T. Lippmann: Hamburger Synchrotronstrahlungslabor HASYLAB
G. Reiter: University of Houston

Nature, 2000, vol. 408, issue 6814, 839-841

Abstract: Abstract The local point symmetry of the short-range order in simple monatomic liquids remains a fundamental open question in condensed-matter science. For more than 40 years it has been conjectured1,2,3,4 that liquids with centrosymmetric interactions may be composed of icosahedral building blocks. But these proposed mobile, randomly orientated structures have remained experimentally inaccessible owing to the unavoidable averaging involved in scattering experiments, which can therefore determine only the isotropic radial distribution function. Here we overcome this limitation by capturing liquid fragments at a solid–liquid interface, and observing the scattering of totally internally reflected (evanescent) X-rays, which are sensitive only to the liquid structure at the interface. Using this method, we observe five-fold local symmetry in liquid lead adjacent to a silicon wall, and obtain an experimental portrait of the icosahedral fragments that are predicted to occur in all close-packed monatomic liquids. By shedding new light on local bond order in disordered structures such as liquids and glasses, these results should lead to a better microscopic understanding of melting, freezing and supercooling.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35048537 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:408:y:2000:i:6814:d:10.1038_35048537

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35048537

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().