Abstract
Understanding disordered structure is difficult due to insufficient information in experimental data. Here, we overcome this issue by using a combination of diffraction and simulation to investigate oxygen packing and network topology in glassy (g-) and liquid (l-) MgO-SiO(2) based on a comparison with the crystalline topology. We find that packing of oxygen atoms in Mg(2)SiO(4) is larger than that in MgSiO(3), and that of the glasses is larger than that of the liquids. Moreover, topological analysis suggests that topological similarity between crystalline (c)- and g-(l-) Mg(2)SiO(4) is the signature of low glass-forming ability (GFA), and high GFA g-(l-) MgSiO(3) shows a unique glass topology, which is different from c-MgSiO(3). We also find that the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) is a free electron-like state at a void site of magnesium atom arising from decreased oxygen coordination, which is far away from crystalline oxides in which LUMO is occupied by oxygen's 3s orbital state in g- and l-MgO-SiO(2), suggesting that electronic structure does not play an important role to determine GFA. We finally concluded the GFA of MgO-SiO(2) binary is dominated by the atomic structure in terms of network topology.