Disordered Materials: A Survey of Amorphous Solids
YANG-TSE CHENG 1 and
WILLIAM L. JOHNSON 2
1 California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, and is a senior research scientist in the Physical Chemistry Department, General Motors Research Laboratories, Warren, MI 48090.
2 Professor of Materials Science at the W. M. Keck Laboratory of Engineering Materials, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125.
A brief historical perspective and a review of the current research on amorphous or glassy materials are presented. Glass formation by natural processes and by laboratory synthesis techniques is described. Recent efforts to characterize and model the atomic scale structure of amorphous phases are surveyed. The relation between amorphous and liquid states is emphasized in a discussion of thermodynamics and kinetics. The topic of crystal-to-glass transformation in the solid state and the related issue of crystal stability and melting are discussed.
