Spiral Wrapping a Noncrystallographic Spiral: A Universal Building Unit for a Wide Range of Structures from Metals to Polymers

Abstract

It is shown that a spiral wrapping a noncrystallographic spiral is a universal building unit for a wide class of structures from metals to polymers. The noncrystallographic symmetry of such a unit makes it possible to describe adequately the features of an actual configuration of such structures. Theoretical and experimental data are used to describe the structure of metallic glasses as a random packing of close-packed tetrahedral spirals instead of the traditional random packing of atoms.