An analysis of disorder in thin silicon oxide coatings

Abstract

We analyze theoretically and experimentally the influence of disorder in thin brittlecoatings on their fragmentation kinetics. It turns out that in linear bond-networkmodels the mean fragment length ⟨L⟩ scales with the applied strainϵ, i.e. ⟨L⟩ ∝ ϵ−α, with αdepending on the degree of disorder in the coating. Experimentally we monitor thefragmentation of thin silicon oxide coatings. The analysis of the fragmentationkinetics reveals that ⟨L⟩ ∝ ϵ−α is well fulfilled and that α ranges from 1/3 to 1/2, being in very good agreement with the theory.