Structure of pure metallic and semiconductor glasses

Abstract

There has been a great deal of interest in amorphous materials as the advance of technology has enabled a greater variety of alloys and elements to be quenched into the amorphous state and as new uses for amorphous materials have been developed. Because the analysis of the structure of amorphous alloys is quite complicated, it is highly desirable to have specimens available of pure elements in the amorphous state in order to more easily study amorphous structure and for comparison with theory. However, very few pure elements have been quenched into the amorphous state and most of those that have been are only stable at temperatures close to absolute zero. This has limited the methods available for the study of their structure. We have produced room-temperature-stable amorphous samples of pure elements (V,Nb,Ta,Mo,W,Fe,Co,Ni,Si,Ge) from the melt using electrohydrodynamic (EHD) atomization. Diffraction patterns of these samples were obtained using a Vacuum Generators HB501 STEM and these patterns were analyzed to obtain the radial distribution function for the pure element specimens.