BOND ORDERING IN AMORPHOUS SI1-XNX

We describe the application of a standard thermodynamic model, the quasi-chemical approximation, to the problem of bond arrangement in amorphous Si1-xN(x) and use it to interpret X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy data to obtain the distribution of nitrogen atoms in this material. We find that, although amorphous Si1-xN(x) is chemically ordered in the sense that nitrogen atoms are coordinated only by silicon atoms, the nitrogen atoms are distributed essentially randomly throughout the sample.