The Condensed Matter & Surface Sciences Colloquium Series presents Badri Shyam of Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory on “Structural Studies of Sub-micron Amorphous Thin Films using Grazing-incidence X-ray Total Scattering” on Thursday, March 2, at 4:10 p.m. in Walter 245.
Badri Shyam
Abstract: Amorphous thin films play an important role in science and technology. In order to create the next-generation of high-performance amorphous coatings, magnets and solid electrolytes, it would be beneficial to leverage design principles derived from structure-property relationships in these materials. However, unlike in crystalline materials, delineating structure-property relationships in amorphous materials is unusually difficult due to their inherent structural complexity. Further, accessing high-quality structural information from amorphous thin films presents several experimental challenges due to the extremely weak scattering from the films, low sample volume, and contamination of the scattering signal from the substrate. In this talk, I will discuss the potential of grazing-incidence X-ray total scattering measurements to overcome these challenges to obtain high-quality structural information on amorphous thin films. I will focus on two classes of materials viz. amorphous tantalum oxides and In-Zn-O transparent conducting oxides (TCOs), highlighting the potential for such measurements to further our understanding of amorphous materials.
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