Geometric Frustration of Icosahedron in Metallic Glasses

Order, Order The structure of glassy materials, which are known to have short-range order but no long-range pattern, continues to be a puzzle. One current theory is that some glassy materials possess icosahedral ordering, a motif that cannot show translational periodicity. Hirata et al. (p. 376 , published online 11 July) obtained diffraction patterns from subnanometer volumes in a metallic glass, which show some, but not all, of the expected features of an icosahedron. Simulations suggest that the patterns arise from icosahedrons distorted to include features of the face-centered cubic structure. This observation is different from the predictions of molecular dynamics simulations and provides pivotal information in understanding the competition between the formation of the globally inexpensive long-range order and the locally inexpensive short-range order.