Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2011
Amorphization, like glass-formation, represents fundamentally a failure to crystallize. The problem is to understand how atoms can rearrange themselves, perhaps within the confines of unaffected surrounding crystal, after a local disordering event. Some ceramics, like alkali halides and oxides with the rocksalt structure, appear almost impossible to amorphize, forming localized aggregate defects (voids, dislocation loops, colloids) and even decomposing (as a response to radiation disorder), rather than structurally reordering (or disordering). Other network solids such as silicas and silicates readily amorphize. In this study, we attempt to establish topology and structural freedom as criteria for amorphization of network solids.