Silicon dioxide is an important catalyst material, a mainstay insulator in microelectronics, and a widely distributed terrestrial and marine skeletal mineral. Geologically, it is found in one of a large number of polymorphic crystalline states, but can also be rendered “amorphous” by rapid cooling from the melt through a glass transition, depositing from a vapor or from solution (in radiolaria skeletons), oxidizing silicon, or irradiating with electrons, ions or neutrons. While the structures of the crystalline polymorphs are well documented, the structure of even the exhaustively studied vitreous silica remains largely enigmatic. Diffraction provides average information about short-range order—which appears to comprise [SiO4] tetrahedral units in all but a high-pressure crystalline polymorph—but is relatively insensitive to alternative medium-range arrangements of these structural units. One sensitive, but little understood, indicator is the position and shape of the first sharp diffraction peak (FSDP).
Glass Transition in Supercooled Liquids with Medium-Range Crystalline Order