Professor Pol Duwez of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA, developed a method in 1960 to solidify metallic melts at cooling rates exceeding about 105 K/sec. It was shown that under these non-equilibrium conditions it was possible to obtain supersaturated solid solutions, metastable crystalline inter- mediate phases and even amorphous phases under appropriate quench- ing conditions and for suitable alloy compositions. Subsequently,...