The structural properties of materials play a fundamental role in the determination of their suitability for a specific application. This book is intended as a contribution to the efforts to increase the knowledge of the influence exerted on the properties of materials by their crystalline or amorphous structure. To this aim, some of the materials that are most promising for their use in different technological fields have been studied, namely graphene, titanium oxide, several types of functional metal oxides, porphyrinic crystalline solids, plasma deposited polymers, amorphous silicon, as well as hydrogenated amorphous carbon. These materials have been presented by the authors for their use in different applications, including microelectronics, photonics, and biomedicine.

A reissue of a classic Oxford text. The book sets out theoretical concepts and makes comparisons with experiments for a wide variety of phenomena in non-crystalline materials.

The earliest experimental data on an oxygen-free glass have been published by Schulz-Sellack in 1870 [1]. Later on, in 1902, Wood [2], as well as Meier in 1910 [3], carried out the first researches on the optical properties of vitreous selenium. The interest in the glasses that exhibit transparency in the infrared region of the optical spectrum rose at the beginning of the twentieth century. Firstly were investigated the heavy metal oxides and the transparency limit was extended from (the case of the classical oxide glasses) up to wavelength. In order to extend this limit above the scientists tried the chemical compositions based on the elements of the sixth group of the Periodic Table, the chalcogens: sulphur, selenium and tellurium. The systematic research in the field of glasses based on chalcogens, called chalcogenide glasses, started at the middle of our century. In 1950 Frerichs [4] investigated the glass and published the paper: “New optical glasses transparent in infrared up to 12 . Several years later he started the study of the selenium glass and prepared several binary glasses with sulphur [5]. Glaze and co-workers [6] developed in 1957 the first method for the preparation of the glass at the industrial scale, while Winter-Klein [7] published reports on numerous chalcogenides prepared in the vitreous state.

This second edition deals in an elementary way with electrons in non-crystalline systems. It reflects advances in the theory of interactions in non-crystalline systems, provides a more detailed discussion of the "minimum metallic conductivity", and addresses the relevance of disorder in the new high-temperature semiconductors.

The automatic generation of parallel code from high level sequential description is of key importance to the wide spread use of high performance machine architectures. This text considers (in detail) the theory and practical realization of automatic mapping of algorithms generated from systems of uniform recurrence equations (do-lccps) onto fixed size architectures with defined communication primitives. Experimental results of the mapping scheme and its implementation are given.

Chemistry and Technology of Silicones retains the nature of a monograph despite its expanded scope, giving the reader in condensed form not only a wide-ranging but also a thorough review of this rapidly growing field. In contrast to some other monographs on organosilicon compounds that have appeared in the interim, the silicones occupy in this edition the central position, and the technological part of the work is entirely devoted to them. This book comprises 12 chapters, and begins with a general discussion of the chemistry and molecular structure of the silicones. The following chapters then discuss preparation of silanes with nonfunctional organic substituents; monomeric organosilicon compounds RnSiX4-n; and organosilanes with organofunctional groups. Other chapters cover preparation of polyorganosiloxanes; the polymeric organosiloxanes; other organosilicon polymers; production of technical silicone products from polyorganosiloxanes; properties of technical products; applications of technical silicone products in various branches of industry; esters of silicic acid; and analytical methods. This book will be of interest to practitioners in the fields of molecular chemistry.

This comprehensive book provides a full description of experimental and theoretical details and the latest theories. The expert contributions point out the direction research is currently taking, the expectations and implications, serving as useful introductory surveys.