As recently demonstrated, amorphous metal foams are highly ductile in compression, and thus offer attractive compromises in mechanical and physical properties between crystalline metallic and ceramic foams. Challenges associated with fabrication of amorphous metal foams are critically assessed in the context of current and future processing methods, and conclusions are drawn regarding the prope...

Interstellar water ice is mainly amorphous, but the nature of its morphology still remains poorly known. The experimental study described in this work focuses on how relevant changes of the ice morphology result from atomic hydrogen exposure and subsequent recombination. We show that there is an exponential decrease in the porosity of the amorphous water ice sample following hydrogen-atom irrad...

We have simulated using molecular dynamics the thermal stability and crystallization kinetics of nanometre-sized clusters of amorphous Si embedded in crystalline Si, which are of interest for phase-change memory devices. We have calculated the interfacial and bulk excess energies of the amorphous clusters, and studied their crystallization kinetics at 700–1500 K. At temperatures below (above) 1...

The structures and magnetic properties of Pr–Fe–Al alloys produced by the metallic mold casting method were investigated. The Pr–Fe–Al alloy consisted of the amorphous phase together with the non-ferromagnetic Pr phase. Magnetic measurements confirmed that the origin of coercivity in the alloys was the amorphous phase. It was found that the Curie temperature and coercivity of the alloys were st...

2014 A comparison is made between incommensurate phases related with the well known Frendel-Kontorova problem, and amorphous structures, on the basis of a problem of conflict between different symmetries. This similarity leads to a fruitful comparison of solutions with the introduction of a 3-dimensional devil’s staircase for the characterization of amorphous structures. Finally for amorphous s...