Metallic glass: A crystal at heart
Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 14:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Glass, by definition, is amorphous. But when scientists squeezed tiny samples of a metallic glass under high pressure, they got a surprise: The atoms lined up in a regular pattern to form a single crystal. The discovery offers a new window into the structure and behavior of metallic glasses, which have been used for decades in products such as anti-theft tags and power transformers but are still poorly understood.