Page "Amorphous solid" Paragraph 4
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Even amorphous materials have some short-range order at the atomic length scale due to the nature of chemical bonding.
Furthermore, in very small crystals a large fraction of the atoms are located at or near the surface of the crystal ; relaxation of the surface and interfacial effects distort the atomic positions, decreasing the structural order.
Even the most advanced structural characterization techniques, such as x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy, have difficulty in distinguishing between amorphous and crystalline structures on these length scales.
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