Amorphous Materials

This lecture introduces amorphous materials, focusing on glass as a well-known example. It covers the specific volume, glass transition, and common amorphous materials like oxide glasses, organic polymers, and metallic glasses. The lecture also discusses probing the atomic structure, model atomic structures of c-Si and a-Si:H, and the effect of hydrogen on the structure of amorphous silicon. It concludes by explaining the level of disorder in a-Si and a-Si:H, emphasizing the conservation of chemical covalent bonding nature in a network of silicon atoms despite the loss of translational invariance over long ranges.