Superconductivity in Metallic Glasses

Abstract

The earliest studies of amorphous superconductors were carried out twenty-five years ago on thin films of simple metals prepared by vapor deposition on a cryogenic substrate (1,2). Bergmann (3), and the author (4) have surveyed some of the properties of such materials in recent reviews. In the past ten years, studies of amorphous superconductors have been extended to transition metals (5,6), and most recently to metallic glasses (4,6,7). The latter materials are prepared by rapid quenching of liquid metallic alloys using techniques originally developed by Duwez (8).