The variety of ordering transitions in liquids characterized by a locally favoured structure

¹ Département de Physique, École Normale Supérieure - 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France, EU
² School of Chemistry, University of Sydney - Sydney N.S.W. 2006, Australia

^a p.harrowell@chem.usyd.edu.au

Received: 19 July 2011
Accepted: 14 September 2011

Abstract

We present a new lattice model of liquids in which the energy of a configuration is determined by the local coordination environments rather than pairwise interactions. This model is used to explore how the accumulation of order on cooling depends on the geometry of the locally favoured structure. We find that, while high-symmetry local structures result in ordering that occurs predominantly via a thermodynamic freezing transition, liquids characterised by a low-symmetry local structure exhibit a significant increase in local order on cooling before crystallizing.