SMALL-ANGLE NEUTRON-SCATTERING STUDY OF CRYSTAL-GROWTH IN SEMICONDUCTOR-DOPED GLASSES

A small-angle neutron scattering study of the kinetics of growth of semiconductor crystallites in a glass matrix is presented. The scattered intensity I(k) exhibits a peak at a nonzero scattering vector and decreases to zero as k goes to zero. The I(k) patterns measured at different annealing temperatures present a scaling behavior consistent with the ripening approximation. We show that I(k) is in good agreement with the predictions of a simple phenomenological model, based on local mass conservation, which describes a dilute gas of crystallites surrounded by depletion zones.