How chemical interaction scale affects the dynamics of dense metallic liquids

Using deep inelastic neutron scattering, we plan to investigate chemical short range order on a quantitative level in liquid alloys and its correlation with the long range mass transport in the melt. We chose two alloy melts, Zr34Ni36 and Hf35Ni65, where Zr and Hf exhibit identical valence electron shell configurations and very similar chemical properties. However, the atomic dynamics in the alloy melts differ by a factor of 2. By measuring the mass-resolved, atom-projected vibrational density of states, we intend to quantify the chemical interaction in the melt in terms of the chemical interaction scale. This allows us to gain deeper insight on the interaction potentials and the electronic origin of chemical short range order in the liquid alloys, in order to understand the structure-property relation in the disordered systems.