Nanocolloidal Solutions of As–S Glasses and their Relation to the Surface Morphology of Spin-Coated Amorphous Films

Amorphous chalcogenide (As—S) thin films can be fabricated by the spin-coating technique from appropriate solutions of the corresponding glasses. Such films exhibit a grainy texture, which is presumably related to the cluster size in the solution. In this paper we report on a possible relation between the grain size of the surface of spin-coated As33S67 chalcogenide thin films and the cluster size of the glass in butylamine solutions, using atomic force microscopy and dynamic light scattering, respectively. A novel athermal photo-aggregation effect in the liquid state is reported also.