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Nature 448, 758-759 (16 August 2007) | doi:10.1038/448758a; Published online 15 August 2007
Materials science: Metal turned to glass
Gilles Tarjus1
Abstract
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.
Glasses are nothing but frozen liquids: closely packed, but randomly ordered assemblages of molecules that no longer flow on any reasonable timescale (by human standards), and thus are solids for all practical purposes. Being a solid while lacking the long-range order typical of that phase of matter is what gives glasses the physical properties that make them so useful in our everyday life.
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