Habilitationsvortrag

In spite of the fact that amorphous materials have been known and manufactured for thousands of years, the scientific study of these solids is usually barely touched upon in typical solid-state textbooks. In recent years, many new technologically important materials have been produced in amorphous form, which increases the interest in and the need for a deeper understanding of these solids. In my lecture, I will give a brief overview of important classes of amorphous materials (metallic, molecular and covalent network glasses), emphasizing concepts through which we can describe the structure of amorphous materials, and explaining the need for developing a new, unifying framework that will allow to predict the formation and the properties of new amorphous materials.