Recently, the words “metamict” or “metamictization” have been increasingly used instead of “amorphous” or “amorphization” in acknowledgment of the fact that the first recognized example of the transition from the crystalline to the aperiodic state was in natural materials—minerals. The term (originally “metamikte” from Greek for “mix otherwise” because of their complex compositions) was first defined by Broegger in a Danish encyclopedia as one of three classes of amorphous substances: porodine (= colloidal), hyaline, and metamikte. Minerals considered to be metamict were judged amorphous because of their conchoidal fracture and isotropic optical properties; however, well-developed crystal faces evidenced the prior crystalline state.

Hamberg was the first to suggest that metamictization is a radiation-induced, periodic-to-aperiodic phase transition caused by alpha particles which originate from constituent radionuclides in the uranium and thorium decay series. Rinne and Vegard confirmed by x-ray diffraction studies that metamict minerals were either amorphous or finely crystalline. Later work supported the idea of a radiation-induced transformation. The work of Stackelberg and Rottenbach established that the decrease in density, refractive indices, and birefringence correlated with the breakdown of the structure with increasing alpha-decay dose. Stackelberg and Rottenback tried to test this hypothesis directly by bombarding a thin slab of zircon with alpha particles. The results were inconclusive because the slab fractured, but this must have been one of the first experiments in which an “ion beam” was used to “modify” a material.