Abstract
Amorphous materials are condensed phases which do not possess the long-range translational (or orientational) order — or periodicity — characteristic of a crystal. The terms amorphous and non-crystalline are synonymous under this definition. The term glassy has the same structural meaning, but in addition it also usually implies that the material exhibits a ‘glass transition’ (evidenced by a discontinuous change in, for example, the heat capacity from a liquid-like to crystal-like value at the transition on cooling a melt). Although the presence of dynamic disorder in the case of liquids complicates matters, the average atomic structure of liquids can be described in similar ways to that of amorphous solids.
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Elliott, S.R. (2001). The Structure of Amorphous Materials. In: Thorpe, M.F., Tichý, L. (eds) Properties and Applications of Amorphous Materials. NATO Science Series, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0914-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0914-0_1
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