Structure of Disordered Materials

This book is about the theoretical, experimental and computational aspects of disordered materials over a broad range of compositions. It deals with the structural characterization of glasses, liquids and solids by various techniques, and guides the reader how to interpret those data. The fields involved are broad, spanning from fundamental physical chemistry and physics to bio-tech and materials design. The introductory section (1) serves the reader with fundamental physical principles on different types of disorder, the atomic structure, and transition processes. The technical focus of the book is covered in section (2) which gives an overview of the most popular techniques for studying the structure of disordered materials, as there are Neutron and x-ray diffraction, NMR and Raman scattering. These are undoubtedly key techniques in the modern scientist's toolbox. For the first time, these methods are discussed with respect to their application under extreme conditions which has obtained increasing prominence in the materials and energy fields. For example, the use of high pressure as a way to make atomic structure itself an experimental variable has revealed itself to be a powerful means to probe structure/property relationships in a very direct manner. It is not surprising that it is often found difficult to interpret experimental data on these systems. Therefore section (3) serves an overview of modern computational methods for combining information from diverse data sets, building atomistic models, and testing hypotheses is needed. It presents inverse methods that fit date versus predictive simulations or ab initio calculations. The authors list the most successful methods and describe how they are applied to different sets of materials, including examples. They also show how to combine date from different techniques. This reference provides a comprehensive overview to those interested in the structural studies of disordered materials, as there are post-graduate and post-doctoral researches, but also for scientists aiming to develop research programs in the area of disordered material science in both solid and liquid systems, or searching for inspiration on methodology from other disciplines. The text could also provide good material for advanced final year undergraduate courses in materials characterisation.

Table of Contents:
1 Disorder in materials 1.1 Types of disorder 1.2 Atomic Structure 1.3 Production of disordered materials 1.4 Transitions in disordered materials 2 Experimental techniques 2.1 Neutron Diffraction 2.2 X-ray diffraction (& EXAFS) 2.3 TEM and Electron Diffraction & Scattering 2.4 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy 2.5 IR & Raman Spectroscopy 2.6 Extreme conditions 3 Modeling and interpretation 3.1 Reverse Monte Carlo 3.2 Empirical Potential Structure Refinement 3.3 Molecular Dynamics 3.4 Density functional Theory

About the Author :
Chris Benmore is Chief Scientist at the Structural Science Group at Argonne National Lab, and at Arizona State University. He received a PhD in Physics of the University of East Anglia, UK, and served as staff scientist at the ISIS neutron facility at the Rutherford Lab, UK. He also belongs to the Adjunct faculty of Arizona State University. His research has been devoted to the structure and dynamics of glassy, liquid and amorphous materials and disordered materials at extreme conditions. Chris Benmore is an expert for x-ray, neutron and simulation techniques and has published broadly in the scientific literature. He contributes to a US-wide neutron and x-ray scattering course and so is an experienced and successful communicator. Jeff Yarger is Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Arizona State Univesity. He is the founding director of the Magnetic Resonance Research Center at ASU, a resource for characterization and structure determination of proteins, DNA, biomolecules, chemical compounds, and solid materials by nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMR). His research currently focuses on biopolymers, nano particles and amorphous materials. Prof. Yarger has a research team at Arizona State University (ASU) and Argonne National Labs. Central to ongoing research is the use and development of solid-state NMR and MRI techniques applied to elucidate local structure and dynamics in biopolymers, nanoparticles and amorphous materials including structural measurements of spider silk with end applications in bio-tech.