Induced transformation in amorphous chalcogenides

Chalcogenide glasses or, more generally, amorphous chalcogenides are known as excellent materials for optoelectronics. The interest in amorphous nanolayered materials is caused by the wide range of tunable properties. Their physical properties are variable depending on the composition and they are easily tailored by external excitation such as light, e-beam or other sources of energy. They have an important property to undergo various specific, peculiar only to chalcogenides, structural transformations. These structural transformations are accompanied by the change of their electric and optical properties. Therefore they have found several applications in optoelectronics and photonics. The present thesis contains new results and conclusions on laser light and e-beam induced volume expansion and surface pattern formation investigated in the selected Se/As2S3, Ge20Se80/Ge33S67 and Sb/As2S3 nanolayered structures. The obtained results give a new insight into the mechanism of stimulated transformation and characteristics of the nanol