Covalently Bonded Disordered Thin-Film Materials:

Book excerpt: The potential impact of covalently bonded disordered thin films is enormous. These materials are amorphous-to-nanocrystalline structures made from light atomic weight elements from the first row of the periodic table. Examples include amorphous tetrahedral diamond-like carbon, boron nitride, carbon nitride, boron carbide, and boron-carbon-nitride. These materials are under development for use as novel low-power, high-visibility elements in flat-panel display technologies, cold-cathode sources for microsensors and vacuum microelectronics, encapsulants for both environmental protection and microelectronics, optical coatings for laser windows, and ultrahard tribological coatings. Researchers come together to report on the status of key areas and discoveries. The book is organized into five sections. The first four highlight ongoing work primarily in the area of amorphous/nanocrystalline (disordered) carbon thin films: theoretical and experimental structural characterization; electrical and optical characterizations; growth methods; and cold-cathode electron emission results. The fifth section describes the growth, characterization and application of boron- and carbon-nitride thin films.