The beauty and utility of crystalline materials has seen in almost every application today. From silicon microprocessor and photovoltaic technologies, to dielectrics, laser applications, optics (particularly infrared optics), armors and abrasion resistant materials, and many other sorts of solid states. As a physicist who has turned to materials science as a field of study, the power of symmetry seems undeniable - allowing us to compute and estimate (given the intense modeling efforts and attention of many scientists) many of the physical, optical, electrical and magnetic properties of the crystals we find around us.
Nature is not so boring as to only use symmetric arrangements of atoms; and thus amorphous solid states are found as well. Photovoltaics, thin film transistors, and microbolometer technologies have all developed niches for the use of amorphous silicon, which is largely how I approach the subject. On a more fresh scientific front, the use of graphene has brought a new context to the issue of amorphous vs crystalline materials. []
Many materials defy many typically used techniques to observe crystalline structure when they are nanocrystalline
Amorphous materials (literally "without form") have been discussed for some time, but more recently it is becoming understood that being 'without form' does not imply being without order of some type.
In the context of amorphous silicon
- 'Amorphous' may describe the limits of the detection method, rather than a property of the material itself. Thus an amorphous x-ray diffraction pattern might be a nanocrystalline TEM diffraction pattern.
