In this chapter, a series of molecular dynamics simulations have been carried out to explore structural and dynamical features of monatomic liquid metallic films during rapid cooling. Results show a semi‐ordered inhomogeneous morphology containing crystal‐like and disordered regions. The icosahedron contributes to nucleation through the synergy with other short‐range ordered structures and participates in crystal growth via assimilation, but the pinning effect should be overcome. The second‐peak splitting in pair correlation functions is found as the result of a statistical average of crystal‐like and disordered structural regions, not just the amorphous structure. The splitting can be viewed as a prototype of crystal‐like peaks exhibiting distorted and vestigial features. Besides, we use the parameter P(a, τ, ν) for predicting both local structural order and motion propensity. The fraction of crystalline clusters follows a negative power‐law scaling with the cooling rate increasing, which is the inverse of P(a, τ, ν).
Part of the book: Metallic Glasses