Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 81: Post-Deadline Session

O 81.1: Talk

Thursday, March 14, 2013, 20:00–20:15, H36

The Structure of Vitreous Silica — •Markus Heyde, Christin Büchner, Leonid Lichtenstein, and Hans-Joachim Freund — Fritz-Haber-Institut, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195 Berlin, Germany

Richard Zallen once stated that the atomic structure of an amorphous solid is one of its key mysteries, and structural information is still lacking. Since the invention of X-ray diffraction by Max von Laue [1], crystalline and amorphous materials, i.e. glasses, have been analyzed over the last century. Still, diffraction methods are powerful tools in the field of surface science. However, they have limitations when it comes to the analysis of structures without periodicity and order.

Here we present how we have applied state of the art atomic force and scanning tunneling microscopy to verify Zachariasen’s idea about the structure of vitreous silica [2].

A thin silica film has been grown on a single metal crystal of Ru(0001) to visualize for the first time such continuous random network in real space [3]. A thorough statistical analysis and a comparison to diffraction data of silica glass as well as to theoretical models will be presented [4]. This film system now allows the unique possibility to study the structural transition between a crystalline and amorphous phase with atomic resolution [5].

[1] W. Friedrich, P. Knipping, M. Laue, Ann. Phys. 346, 971 (1913)

[2] W. H. Zachariasen, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 54, 3841 (1932)

[3] L. Lichtenstein, et al., Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 51, 404 (2012)

[4] L. Lichtenstein, et al., J. Phys. Chem. C 116, 20426 (2012)

[5] L. Lichtenstein, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 106101 (2012)