An ordered metallic glass solid solution phase that grows from the melt like a crystal

We report structural studies of an Al–Fe–Si glassy solid that is a solid solution phase in the classical thermodynamic sense. We demonstrate that it is neither a frozen melt nor nanocrystalline. The glass has a well-defined solubility limit and rejects Al during formation from the melt. The pair distribution function of the glass reveals chemical ordering out to at least 12 Å that resembles the ordering within a stable crystalline intermetallic phase of neighboring composition. Under isothermal annealing at 305 °C the glass first rejects Al, then persists for approximately 1 h with no detectable change in structure, and finally is transformed by a first-order phase transition to a crystalline phase with a structure that is different from that within the glass. It is possible that this remarkable glass phase has a fully ordered atomic structure that nevertheless possesses no long-range translational symmetry and is isotropic.