Deconvolution of the infrared absorption peak of the vibrational stretching mode of silicon dioxide: Evidence for structural order?

Abstract

It is found that the characteristic infrared spectra of thermally grown silicon dioxide in the 1075 cm⁻¹ region for films in the thickness range 28–450 Å mathematically deconvolute consistently into two distinctly separate Gaussian profiles. The derived peaks are found around 1050 cm⁻¹ with a full width at half‐maximum transmission value (FWHM) of 65 cm⁻¹, and near 1085 cm⁻¹ with a FWHM of 35 cm⁻¹. The relative band areas of these two features are consistently found to be approximately 0.76 and 0.24, respectively. These observations could be supportive of at least two structural models of amorphous silicon dioxide disclaiming the generally accepted continuous random network arrangement.