Thin films, the chemical processing up to gelation

Abstract

The sol-gel process is an interesting method of synthesizing coating materials an applying them in the form of the films. The techniques are similar to those of conventional coating techniques such as dip, spin or spray coatings. These techniques allow one to prepare coatings with smooth surfaces or planarization effects. Based on the chemistry of the synthesis, a large variety of materials can be obtained: glasses, ceramic materials and composites. One of the most interesting features is the possibility of synthesizing multicomponent compositions or composites. For multicomponent materials, the stoichiometry can be controlled very exactly and composites can include glass-ceramic, ceramic-ceramic and ceramic-organic compositions. Especially, the composites open a field of coatings which is difficult to achieve by other than sol-gel techniques. The exploitation of the potential will be an interesting future task.