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Science 7 July 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5783, pp. 77 - 80
DOI: 10.1126/science.1128314
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Reports

Surface Crystallization in a Liquid AuSi Alloy

Oleg G. Shpyrko,1,2* Reinhard Streitel,1 Venkatachalapathy S. K. Balagurusamy,1 Alexei Y. Grigoriev,1 Moshe Deutsch,3 Benjamin M. Ocko,4 Mati Meron,5 Binhua Lin,5 Peter S. Pershan1

X-ray measurements reveal a crystalline monolayer at the surface of the eutectic liquid Au82Si18, at temperatures above the alloy's melting point. Surface-induced atomic layering, the hallmark of liquid metals, is also found below the crystalline monolayer. The layering depth, however, is threefold greater than that of all liquid metals studied to date. The crystallinity of the surface monolayer is notable, considering that AuSi does not form stable bulk crystalline phases at any concentration and temperature and that no crystalline surface phase has been detected thus far in any pure liquid metal or nondilute alloy. These results are discussed in relation to recently suggested models of amorphous alloys.

1 Department of Physics and Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
2 Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
3 Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.
4 Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973, USA.
5 Center for Advanced Radiation Sources, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: oshpyrko{at}anl.gov

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Germanium Nanowire Growth Below the Eutectic Temperature.
S. Kodambaka, J. Tersoff, M. C. Reuter, and F. M. Ross (2007)
Science 316, 729-732
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)