Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-kfd97 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-18T08:54:37.381Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Total scattering studies of silica polymorphs: similarities in glass and disordered crystalline local structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2018

D. A. Keen  and
M. T. Dove
D. A. Keen*
Affiliation:
ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, UK
M. T. Dove
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge University, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK
*
* E-mail: d.a.keen@rl.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The structure of amorphous silica has frequently been compared with its crystalline counterparts in an attempt to understand the glass structure beyond short-range correlations. This paper presents results from neutron total scattering measurements of several polymorphs of silica and shows how these can be used to make a direct, quantitative comparison of amorphous and crystalline forms. It is found that the glass is similar to HP-tridymite and β-cristobalite, both dynamically-disordered crystalline phases of silica, but only out to distances ∼7.5 Å, beyond which the structures diverge. This is too small to validate a microcrystallite theory of glass structure. It is the average 180° Si–O–Si linkage in these two crystalline phases which gives them the flexibility for their instantaneous disordered structure to resemble the quenched (static) glass structure.

Keywords

total scatteringsilica polymorphsamorphous silicaglass

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical Magazine , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , June 2000 , pp. 447 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Downs, R.T., Gibbs, G.V., Bartelmehs, K.L. and Boisen, M.B. (1992) Variations of bond lengths and volumes of silicate tetrahedra with temperature. Amer. Mineral., 77, 751–7.Google Scholar
Elliott, S.R. (1995) Second sharp diffraction peak in the structure of binary covalent network glasses. Phys. Rev. B, 51, 8599–601.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gaskell, P.H. and Wallis, D.J. (1996) Medium-range order in silica, the canonical network glass. Phys. Rev. Lett., 76, 66–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grimley, D.I., Wright, A.C. and Sinclair, R.N. (1990) Neutron scattering from vitreous silica IV. Time-of-flight diffraction. J. Non-Cryst. Sol., 119, 49–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatch, D.M. and Ghose, S. (1991) The α-β phase transition in cristobalite, SiO2: symmetry analysis, domain structure and the dynamic nature of the β-phase. Phys. Chem. Miner., 17, 554–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keen, D.A. (1997) Refining disordered structural models using reverse Monte Carlo methods: application to vitreous silica. Phase Transitions, 61, 109–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keen, D.A. (1998) Reverse Monte Carlo refinement of disordered silica phases. Pp. 101–19 in: Local Structure from Diffraction (Billinge, S.J.L. and Thorpe, M.F., editors). Plenum, New York.Google Scholar
Keen, D.A. and McGreevy, R.L. (1990) Structural modelling of glasses using reverse Monte Carlo simulation. Nature, 344, 423–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmahl, W.W., Swainson, I.P., Dove, M.T. and Graeme-Barber, A. (1992) Landau free energy and order parameter behaviour of the α-β phase transition in cristobalite. Zeits. Kristallogr., 201, 125–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, A.C. (1994) Neutron scattering from vitreous silica. V. The structure of vitreous silica: what have we learned from 60 years of diffraction studies? J. Non-Cryst. Sol., 179, 84–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, R.A. (1995) The Rietveld Method. International Union of Crystallography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.Google Scholar
Zachariasen, W.H. (1932) The atomic arrangement in glass. J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 54, 3841–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar