Amorphous chalcogenide thin film deposition can be achieved by a spin-coating technique from proper solutions of the corresponding glass. Films produced in this way exhibit certain grain texture, which is presumably related to the cluster size in solution. This paper deals with the search of such a correlation between grain size of surface morphology of as-deposited spin-coated ${\mathrm{As}}_{33}{\mathrm{S}}_{67}$ chalcogenide thin films and cluster size of the glass in butylamine solutions. Optical absorption spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering were employed to study optical properties and cluster size distributions in the solutions at various glass concentrations. Atomic force microscopy is used to study the surface morphology of the surface of as-deposited and thermally stabilized spin-coated films. Dynamic light scattering revealed a concentration dependence of cluster size in solution. Spectral-dependence dynamic light scattering studies showed an interesting athermal photoaggregation effect in the liquid state.

A systematic and detailed investigation of the structure of AsxTe100−x glasses (20⩽x⩽60) has been undertaken using a combination of structure-probing techniques including high energy x-ray diffraction, neutron diffraction, and x-ray absorption fine structure measurements at the As and TeK edges. The experimental datasets were modeled simultaneously with the reverse Monte Carlo simulation technique. The results revealed that homonuclear bonding for both As and Te atoms is important over the whole glass concentration region studied. At the stoichiometric composition (As40Te60) the average As–As and Te–Te coordination numbers are as high as 1.7±0.2 and 1.3±0.1, respectively. The number of As–As and Te–Te bonds, as well as the average number of bonds/atom, evolves monotonically with composition. Arsenic atoms are threefold coordinated for all compositions investigated. It has also been shown that, in contrast to the results of previous studies, Te is predominantly twofold coordinated for x⩽50. Our results suggest that (i) chemical ordering does not play a decisive role in the formation of short-range order and (ii) similar to some other amorphous tellurides (e.g., Ge2Sb2Te5, GeSb2Te4, and As25Si40Te35) binary AsxTe100−x (x⩽50) alloys obey the “8−N” rule. A detailed comparison has been advanced between the structural details obtained from the present study and several physicochemical properties of As–Te. The comparison revealed striking similarities between the concentration dependence of structural and physicochemical properties.