Amorphous metals and ion implantation

Amorphous metals lack the long-range atomic periodicity typically found in crystalline materials and their atomic arrangements are usually best described in terms of the random packing of hard spheres. Recent work has demonstrated that ion implantation can produce metastable, amorphous alloys. A brief review of the structure of noncrystalline metals is presented and recent data on ion-implanted amorphous alloys is reviewed. A discussion of the route by which ion-induced amorphization proceeds is also given together with some future prospects.