Three-dimensional atomic structure of amorphous solids

Amorphous solids are ubiquitous in our daily life and have widespread applications in science and technology. However, owing to the lack of long-range order, the 3D atomic structure of amorphous solids has eluded direct experimental determination. This fundamentally limits our understanding of the structure and properties of amorphous solids. Here, we perform atomic electron tomography (AET), a 3D reconstruction technique, which does not assume crystallinity [1,2], to determine the 3D structure of amorphous solids at the single-atom level. By reconstructing the 3D atomic coordinates of a multi-component metallic glass, we observe that several short-range order structures interconnect to form medium-range order, supporting efficient cluster packing models for metallic glasses [3]. Furthermore, we decipher the atomic packing of monatomic amorphous solids with liquid-like structure [4]. In contrast to Frank’s hypothesis that the most common motifs in monatomic liquids are icosahedra [5], we observe pentagonal bipyramid networks which give rise to medium-range order. Future work will utilize AET to probe the 3D structure and dynamics of amorphous-crystalline phase and glass transitions at the single-atom level.

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2. J. Miao P. Ercius, S. J. L. Billinge, Science 353, aaf2157 (2016).

3. Y. Yang et al. Nature 592, 60 (2021).

4. Y. Yuan et al. Nature Materials 21, 95 (2022).

5. F. C. Frank. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 215, 43 (1952).