Re:Artificial intelligence accelerates discovery of metallic...
by rbanffy on Sunday April 22, 2018 @06:43PM
(#16899079)
I imagine a clever arrangement of atoms where non-metallic regions alternate with metallic ones could do the trick, as long as the transparent regions line up enough.
But anything this orderly doesn't look like a glass anymore.
Generally you'll get absorption (opacity) when the photon energy exceeds an energy gap, allowing valence band electrons to be bumped into conduction bands, creating a corresponding hole in the valence. In the case of metals, there is effectively no gap at points in k-space, so there is absorption throughout the spectrum.