A computer ‘‘experiment’’ on the microstructure of amorphous Cr

We present a computer experiment for simple monatomic amorphous Cr. Contrasted to the widely used Lennard-Jones or Morse potential function, a first-principles metallic pair potential is employed. Starting from this latter potential, a temperature-quench Monte Carlo simulation procedure is applied to study (a) the liquid–glass transitions and (b) the amorphous states for Cr element. It is found that the pair distribution functions exhibit general short-range order features characteristic of real metallic glasses. Further, by examining the pair potential used and with due attention paid to the Friedel oscillation, we obtain interesting structural results for the amorphous Cr.