July 5, 2017 - Using neutron scattering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a research team captured a time-sensitive phenomenon to prove that the entropy, or randomness, of atoms in a metallic glass when exposed to intense heat is linked to how atoms self-configure versus their vibration. The large neutron flux of ORNL’s Wide Angular Range Chopper Spectrometer continuously recorded changes in the sample’s vibrations as the temperature slowly increased—a technique not possible a decade ago. “It’s only thanks to the incredibly intense neutron beams available at ORNL that we could do this experiment and put to rest a decades-old, much-debated theory that had never been tested,” said Hillary L. Smith from California Institute of Technology who led the paper published in Nature Physics. Understanding the material’s behavior could help in developing better quality metallic glass alloys.
