Abstract
In this investigation a wide range of disorder has been studied in various solid materials. It has been shown that normally brittle materials, including diamond, could be deformed mechanically, and the retained strain relieved by annealing. However, a far greater degree of disorder was exhibited by materials subjected to conditions severely restricting crystal growth. Conventional X-ray line broadening methods were used for the analysis of the disorder induced in the brittle materials. As these analytical methods were inappropriate in the other cases, the potentialities of diffraction computation, based on the Debye interference function were studied, with particular reference to Raney nickel. Alignment order also formed an important microstruetural feature of several of the materials investigated. In cortical bone the texture was found hardly to vary in the bones examined. The textural changes produced by the severe cold-rolling of polyethylene were modified by the addition of several types of branches, whilst the internal texture of shock-quenched diamond particles indicated the structural relationship between the synthetic diamond and the parent graphite.