Book Description

Amorphous dielectrics are known to exhibit anomalous low temperature properties. An extensive review of these properties is presented with an eye toward an understanding of low-lying excitation modes thought to exist in glasses. Work on these systems is described in which a Zr-20 percent Nb samplewhich would be expected to reduce and redistribute the proposed tunneling states. Indeed, the thermal conductivity becomes similar to that of a quenched Zr-8 percent Nb sample and the ''excess'' specific heat linear in temperature dependence is reduced to half the value found in quenched Zr-20 percent Nb. The coefficient of the T3 term in the specific heat unexpectedly increased from 23.3 to 56.9 erg/gm K4 and this is attributed to a softening of the lattice due to annealing. The specific heat of this sample was remeasured after it had been dunked in liquid nitrogen. The cubic term was then found to be 19.5 erg/g K4, smaller than that in quenched Zr-20 percent Nb, an effect which had been expected due to the chemical diffusion during annealing. Further study of this phenomenon is suggested. Among other relevant measurements performed were the specific heat of a sample of amorphous B2O3 (presented by Stephens (1976)); thermal conductivities of phase-separated unleached Vycor glass and Pyrex; thermal conductivities above 1.2°K of polycrystalline MgO, heat-treated Pyroceram and porous Vycor (presented by Tait (1975)) and of mixed crystal KBr-KI (presented by Nathan, Lou and Tait (1976)). The last sample exhibited density fluctuations on a scale of 1000 A but exhibited thermal properties typical of dielectric crystal. Speed of sound measurements were made on both unleached and porous Vycor.