Pressure tunes atomic packing in metallic glass

By employing the state-of-the-art in situ high-pressure synchrotron x-ray measurements and ab initio modeling, we have resolved atomic-level packing details in a metallic glass as a function of pressure. We demonstrate pronounced changes in atomic size ratio (and correspondingly coordination number) with increasing pressure and the accompanying conversion of prism-type coordination to icosahedral short-range order.