非晶体Amorphous solid

非晶体中每个原子的最近邻配位与相应晶体相似（短程有序），但在几个原子间距之外就失去了规律。液体快速冷却、来不及结晶时被“冻结”成非晶态，转变温度称为玻璃化转变温度。X 射线衍射图上非晶体只有弥散的“晕”，没有尖锐的衍射峰；差示扫描量热法中只见 Tg 台阶，没有熔融峰。

Each atom's nearest-neighbour arrangement resembles that in the crystal (short-range order), but regularity is lost beyond a few atomic distances. A liquid cooled too fast to crystallise is 'frozen' into an amorphous state at the glass transition temperature. X-ray patterns show only diffuse halos rather than sharp peaks, and DSC shows a Tg step but no melting peak.

人类制造玻璃已有约 4500 年历史。1932 年扎卡里亚森提出无规网络模型，认为石英玻璃由 SiO₄ 四面体以无规方式连接成三维网络。1960 年杜韦兹用急冷法制得第一种金属玻璃（Au-Si 合金）。1977 年安德森和莫特因无序体系电子结构的研究获诺贝尔物理学奖。

People have made glass for about 4,500 years. In 1932 Zachariasen proposed the continuous random network model, in which silica glass consists of SiO₄ tetrahedra joined randomly into a three-dimensional network. In 1960 Duwez made the first metallic glass, an Au–Si alloy, by rapid quenching. Anderson and Mott shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on the electronic structure of disordered systems.

硅酸盐玻璃用于窗户、容器和光纤；非晶硅用于薄膜太阳能电池和液晶显示器的薄膜晶体管；金属玻璃强度高、弹性好、耐腐蚀，用于高尔夫球杆和变压器铁芯；许多药物制成无定形态以提高溶解度和生物利用度。

Silicate glass is used for windows, containers and optical fibres; amorphous silicon for thin-film solar cells and the thin-film transistors of LCDs; metallic glasses, strong, springy and corrosion-resistant, for golf clubs and transformer cores; and many drugs are formulated amorphous to improve solubility and bioavailability.