Insulating and Semiconducting Glasses

A review of principle topical issues on the basic science of glasses and amorphous thin-films. It also includes select applications of these materials in current and evolving technologies, including optical recording, imaging, solar cells, battery technology and field-emission displays. The glass systems of interest include oxides, chalcogenides and chalcohalides of the group III, IV and V elements, as well as amorphous thin-films of the group IV elements. Glass formation in covalent melts can be understood in terms of new ideas based on constraint counting algorithms which have led to the fragile-strong classification and to the concept of rigidity transition. Vibrational excitations and characterization of the atomic scale structure at various length scales are addressed by an array of experimental probes, including X-ray and neutron scattering, Brillouin scattering, Raman scattering and infrared reflectance, solid state nuclear magnetic resonance, nuclear quadrupole resonance and Mossbauer spectroscopy. Chapters are also devoted to the physics of electronic transport in amorphous materials, to the physics of tunnelling states in crystalline and amorphous solids, and the physics of light-induced effects in glasses. In addition, a chapter is devoted to the rapidly-evolving field of numerical simulations of disordered systems by computer modelling. Each of these topics is discussed by experts who have made contributions to the field.