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The intensive work of materials scientists and solid-state physicists has
given rise to a class of solids known as amorphous metallic alloys or glassy
metals. There is a growing interest among theoretical and applied researchers
alike in the structural properties of these materials.
When a molten metal or metallic alloy is cooled to a solid, a crystalline
structure is formed that depends on the particular alloy composition. In
contrast, molten nonmetallic glass-forming materials when cooled do not assume a
crystalline structure, but instead retain a structure somewhat like that of the
liquid — an amorphous structure. At room temperature the natural long-term
tendency for both types of materials is to assume the crystalline structure. The
difference between the two is in the kinetics or rate of formation of the
crystalline structure which is controlled by factors such as the nature of the
chemical bonding and the ease with which atoms move relative to each other.
Thus, in metals, the kinetics favors rapid formation of a crystallines structure
whereas in nonmetallic glasses the rate of formation is so slow that almost any
cooling rate is sufficient to result in an amorphous structure. For glassy
metals to be formed, the molten metal must be cooled extremely rapidly so that
crystallization is suppressed.
The structure of glassy metals is thought to be similar to that of liquid
metals. One of the first attempts to model the structure of a liquid was that by
the late J. D. Bernal of the University of London, who packed hard spheres into
a rubber vessel in such a way as to obtain the maximum possible density. The
resulting dense, random-packed structure was the basis for many attempts to
model the structure of glassy metals.
Calculations of the density of alloys based on Bernal-type models of the
alloys metal component agree fairly well with the experimentally determined
values from measurements on alloys consisting of a noble metal together with a
metalloid such as alloys of palladium and silicon or alloys consisting of iron
phosphors, and carbon, although small discrepancies remained. One difference
between real alloys and the hard spheres area in Bernal models is that the
components of an alloy have different size, so that models based on two sizes of
spheres are more appropriate for a binary alloy for example. The smaller
metalloid atoms of the alloys might fit into holes in the dense random-packed
structure of the larger metal atoms.
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