Final technical report on Award No. DE-FG02-92ER45465

The motivation of the previous program was to develop methods which could be used in a systematic study of the interface between glass and crystalline oxides. It was recognized that since the mechanical properties of glass-containing oxides are particularly important, it would be desirable to have a method which would also allow a systematic comparison of the mechanical properties of the materials. We found that the geometry of a glass film on a crystalline surface gave several new possibilities: we could develop methods for examining the mechanical properties of the films and the interfaces and we could examine both the crystallization of glass films and their wetting/dewetting behavior. Also, the samples are amenable to examination by the characterization techniques which give information on the chemistry and structure over a wide range of length scales: both chemistry and crystallography can be controlled and changes monitored