Editor's Summary

16 August 2007

Testing one's metal

Glasses come in many forms. For the specific case of metallic glasses, multiple components are usually required to avoid crystallization during normal liquid cooling. (The one notable exception is the two-component metallic glass Zr₅₀Cu₅₀.) Now Bhat et al. have made use of recent theoretical insights into the factors controlling glass formation to determine the experimental conditions for successful vitrification of metallic liquid germanium. Not only have they created the first monatomic metallic glass, they also find evidence for a rare liquid–liquid phase transition in this system.

News and Views: Materials science: Metal turned to glass

In order to form a glass by cooling a liquid, the normal process of solid crystallization must be bypassed. Achieving that for a pure metal had seemed impossible — until pressure was applied to liquid germanium.

Gilles Tarjus

doi:10.1038/448758a

Full Text | PDF (241K)

Letter: Vitrification of a monatomic metallic liquid

M. H. Bhat, V. Molinero, E. Soignard, V. C. Solomon, S. Sastry, J. L. Yarger & C. A. Angell

doi:10.1038/nature06044

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (1,659K) | Supplementary information