The equilibrium state of metallic alloys is crystalline, macroscopic samples usually consist of many individual crystallites. Amorphous alloys can only be prepared by nonequilibrium methods. Very rapid solidification of the melt by melt spinning and mechanical alloying .
Metallic glasses are of fundamental as well as technical interest.
Metallic glass research was increasingly active from about 1975 to 1985. By then only the hard questions remained unanswered - many of them still are. Industrial application in pick-up coils and power transformers became a reality. The most interesting recent developments of metallic glass research are the preparation of Al and Mg based metallic glasses by Inoue at Sendai and the very stable Be containing glasses developed at W. Johnson's group at CalTech. Amorphization by mechanical alloying was demonstrated by several laboratories, first by A. Ye.