Evidence of liquid–liquid transition in glass-forming La(50)Al(35)Ni(15) melt above liquidus temperature

Liquid–liquid transition, a phase transition of one liquid phase to another with the same composition, provides a key opportunity for investigating the relationship between liquid structures and dynamics. Here we report experimental evidences of a liquid–liquid transition in glass-forming La(50)Al(35)Ni(15) melt above its liquidus temperature by (27)Al nuclear magnetic resonance including the temperature dependence of cage volume fluctuations and atomic diffusion. The observed dependence of the incubation time on the degree of undercooling is consistent with a first-order phase transition. Simulation results indicate that such transition is accompanied by the change of bond-orientational order without noticeable change in density. The temperature dependence of atomic diffusion revealed by simulations is also in agreement with experiments. These observations indicate the need of two-order parameters in describing phase transitions of liquids.