• Research Areas
• Glasses and Amorphous Oxides
  • Aluminosilicate Glass Structure
  • Borosilicate Glass Structure
  • Pressure effects on glass and melt structure
  • Insulating coatings for microelectronics
  • Amorphous metal oxides for optical coatings
• Order/Disorder in Minerals and Ceramic Materials
• Dynamics in Crystalline and Molten Silicates and Oxides

Insulating coatings for microelectronics

The electrical and mechanical properties of the insulating layers in microelectronic circuits are critical to their performance. These materials are based on Si with various combinations of O, C, H, and organic groups, and are usually amorphous. Information on their structures is thus very interesting in constructing improved or new types of devices. We are collaborating with the group of Reinhold Dauskardt in Stanford's Materials Science and Engineering Department and colleagues from industry on studies of various thin films of this type, which can be removed from substrates in quantities large enough (ca. 20 mg) for acquiring high-quality 13C, 29Si, and other NMR spectra. A recently published example below shows the richness of information that can be obtained for Si with varying numbers of C and O neighbors.