  The search for effective methods to fabricate bulk single-phase
quasicrystalline Al-Cu-Fe alloys is currently an important task. Crucial to
solving this problem is to understand mechanisms of phase formation in this
system. Here we study crystallization sequence during solidification as well as
the conditions of solid phase formation in slowly solidified Al-Cu-Fe alloys in
a wide range of compositions. Concentration dependencies of undercoolability
were also constructed by differential thermal analysis method. These
experimental results are compared with data on chemical short-range order in
the liquid state determined from \textit{ab initio} molecular dynamic
simulations. We observe that main features of interatomic interaction in the
Al-Cu-Fe alloys are similar for both liquid and solid states and they change in
the vicinity of i-phase composition. In the concentration region, where the
i-phase forms from the melt, both the undercoolability and the crystallization
character depend on the temperature of the melts before cooling.
