Fundamentals of Amorphous Solids: Structure and Properties

Long awaited, this textbook fills the gap for convincing concepts to describe amorphous solids. 
Adopting a unique approach, the author develops a framework that lays the foundations for a theory of amorphousness. He unravels the scientific mysteries surrounding the topic, replacing rather vague notions of amorphous materials as disordered crystalline solids with the well–founded concept of ideal amorphous solids. A classification of amorphous materials into inorganic glasses, organic glasses, glassy metallic alloys, and thin films sets the scene for the development of the model of ideal amorphous solids, based on topology– and statistics–governed rules of three–dimensional sphere packing, which leads to structures with no short, mid or long–range order. This general model is then concretized to the description of specific compounds in the four fundamental classes of amorphous solids, as well as amorphous polyethylene and poly(methyl)methacrylate, emphasizing its versatility and descriptive power. Finally, he includes example applications to indicate the abundance of amorphous materials in modern–day technology, thus illustrating the importance of a better understanding of their structure and properties. 
Equally ideal as supplementary reading in courses on crystallography, mineralogy, solid state physics, and materials science where amorphous materials have played only a minor role until now. 

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 
Classification of Amorphous Materials: Inorganic Glasses, Organic Glasses, Glassy Metallic Alloys, Thin Films 
CHAPTER 2: APPLICATION EXAMPLES 
Rewriteable DVDs: Amorphous–to–Crystalline Transformation 
Amorphous Silicon for Solar Cells 
Amorphous Silica for Optical Fibres in Telecommunications 
Amorphous PMMA – 
UV Resistant Light Covers 
Amorphous Metallic Glass – 
Vitralloy 
CHAPTER 3: PACKING OF SPHERES 
Geometry of Spheres, Packing of Spheres and Neighbours 
Irregular Random Clusters, Their Packing Arrangement by Fürth Combinatorics Method 
Touching Neighbours, Neighbours by Voronoi Tessellation, Topology of Clusters, Neighbours by Coordination 
Measures on Clusters and Packings, Tetrahedricity, Voronoi Polyhedra Notation, Coordination Distribution Function, Configurations of Random Clusters 
Probability of Contacts, Hard and Soft Spheres 
Definition of Solid Packing 
Fixed and Loose Spheres 
CHAPTER 4: IDEAL AMORPHOUS SOLIDS 
Definition of an Ideal Amorphous Solid (IAS) of Class I 
Construction Methods of IAS 
IAS Model for Amorphous Argon 
IAS Models for Binary Metallic and Metalloid Glasses: Ni–Nb, Zr–Cu, Fe–P 
IAS Models for Ternary Metallic and Metalloid Glasses: Zr–Cu, Mg–Cu–Gd 
IAS Models for Multi–Atomic Glasses 
IAS Models for Inorganic Glasses: SiO2, Ge–As–Se 
IAS Models for Organic Glasses 
Amorphous Polyethylene 
Amorphous Poly(Methyl) Methacrylate 
CHAPTER 5. CHARACTERIZATION 
Introduction to X–Ray Scattering from Amorphous Solids 
X–Ray Scattering from IAS Models 
EXAFS