Short-Range Ordering in Amorphous Structures

A numerical investigation is made of some details of the short-range order in model amorphous structures with free boundaries and a number of different interaction potentials. Five- and seven-member rings — typical features of amorphous structures — are found out in all two-dimensional cross-sections of the generated clusters. Histograms of distribution of the nearest-neighbor numbers are constructed and an analysis of the positions of atoms with different coordination numbers within a model cluster volume is performed. An evaluation is made of the effects of the boundary on the coordination number distribution. __________ Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 9, pp. 42–45, September, 2005.