Amorphous materials will have some degree of short-range order at the atomic-length scale due to the nature of intermolecular chemical bonding. Furthermore, in very small crystals, short-range order encompasses a large fraction of the atoms ; nevertheless, relaxation at the surface, along with interfacial effects, distorts the atomic positions and decreases structural order. Even the most advanced structural characterization techniques, such as X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy, can have difficulty distinguishing amorphous and crystalline structures at short size scales.