It is quite difficult to characterize amorphous material. Kindly discuss the techniques available for their characterization. The characterization of amorphous mixed metal oxides is really a great challenge to current state. Herein I am expecting good knowledge sharing and discussion.
I suggest starting with a scientific question, such as 'what is the thickness of the material?', and then find the appropriate characterization tool(s) to address that question.
DMA is a greath tool for this kind of materials, given you can have the proper fixtures.
If you want to close all the gaps, i would kindly suggest XRD initially, followed by DTA/TGA, FTIR and last but not least SEM.
XRD will not give any peak for amorphous materials. Lets take an example of CoFe2O4 spinel material. If we want to prove formation of this composition; how one should move?
XRD, SEM, EDS, TEM and depend on property that you need to study, some other experiment can be suggested.
XRD will give you the best information about amorphousness and also for some extent the percentage of amorphousness.
It is element dependent. You can use the element in the compound as a probe. As for CoFe2O4, Fe57 Mossbauer spectrum measurements will be a good tool. You also can use XPS, NMR etc to find out the change of the properties of the specific element and then deduce the other information.
For composition characterization, if your film is thick enough (>100s of nm) than I'd start with EDS in an SEM. You'll need to make sure there are no overlapping peaks etc. RBS can also do the trick for an accurate, quantitative composition measurement.
Every material have unique properties which is also related to their desired field of use addition to the technique mentioned above for elemental analysis XPS can be very helpful about the composition and the linking between the ingredients. But overall what you require is not mentioned in the question itself. If you could address the need more specifically we may lead to somewhere near to your demand. Since it is not a general discussion.
You can do UV, Raman, XPS,DLS,SEMTEM ,AFM,CV,SQEED,EPR but not XRD.
XRD; IR, SEM, TEM, DTA/TGA all there will suffice to assure you in the process of characterization.
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