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For example, a perfect crystal of diamond would only contain carbon atoms, but a real crystal might perhaps contain a few boron atoms as well. These boron impurities change the diamond's color to slightly blue. Likewise, the only difference between ruby and sapphire is the type of impurities present in a corundum crystal. Twinned pyrite crystal ...
In condensed matter physics and materials science, an amorphous solid (or non-crystalline solid) is a solid that lacks the long-range order that is characteristic of a crystal. The terms " glass " and "glassy solid" are sometimes used synonymously with amorphous solid; however, these terms refer specifically to amorphous materials that undergo ...
Glass is a non-crystalline or amorphous solid material that exhibits a glass transition when heated towards the liquid state. Glasses can be made of quite different classes of materials: inorganic networks (such as window glass, made of silicate plus additives), metallic alloys, ionic melts , aqueous solutions , molecular liquids, and polymers .
The resulting correlation between electronic and crystalline structures is summarized by a single parameter, the weight of the d-electrons per hybridized metallic orbital. The "d-weight" calculates out to 0.5, 0.7 and 0.9 for the fcc, hcp and bcc structures respectively.
A mineraloid is a naturally occurring substance that resembles a mineral, but does not demonstrate the crystallinity of a mineral. Mineraloid substances possess chemical compositions that vary beyond the generally accepted ranges for specific minerals, for example, obsidian is an amorphous glass and not a true crystal; lignite is derived from the decay of wood under extreme pressure ...
The orientation of crystallites can be random with no preferred direction, called random texture, or directed, possibly due to growth and processing conditions.While the structure of a single crystal is highly ordered and its lattice is continuous and unbroken, amorphous materials, such as glass and many polymers, are non-crystalline and do not display any structures, as their constituents are ...
Attributes of the resulting crystal depend largely on factors such as temperature, air pressure, cooling rate, and in the case of liquid crystals, time of fluid evaporation. Crystallization occurs in two major steps. The first is nucleation, the appearance of a crystalline phase from either a supercooled liquid or a supersaturated solvent.
Amorphous metals are either non-ferromagnetic, if they are composed of Ln, Mg, Zr, Ti, Pd, Ca, Cu, Pt and Au, or ferromagnetic, if they are composed of Fe, Co, and Ni. [24] Thermal conductivity is lower than in crystalline metals. As formation of amorphous structure relies on fast cooling, this limits the thickness of amorphous structures.