DOE OSTI2013
Glasses are defined as super cooled liquids, and possess transparency with amorphous structure. SiO 2 and B 2 O 3 are commonly used glass formers for commercial glasses preparation. SiO 2 glass is used in many household applications. Borate glasses play a significant role in various optical applications. Glasses containing P 2 O 5 , GeO 2 , TeO 2 , and ZnCl 2 as glass formers are widely known to be used in laser applications. Oxide glasses are more stable compared with fluoride and chloride glasses because of their relatively high phonon energy. Borate glasses contain planar BO 3 groups as structural units, compared with the silicate glass, tetrahedral SiO 4 . Borate glasses are versatile in the coordination of boron: exist as 3 + or 4 + depending on the temperature of melt, pressure, and concentration of alkali/alkaline oxides that can be used to modify the glass structure. Glasses commonly contain three main components: Glass former, glass intermediate, and network modifier. In the present work, the host glass composition selected is B 2 O 3 -SrO-Al 2 O 3 . In the glass system, B 2 O 3 is a glass former. Advantages of using B 2 O 3 as glass former is that it has a low melting point (339 °C) and a low viscosity. SrO is used as a network modifier which are commonly alkali and alkaline earths, which will lower the melting temperature of the glass. Al 2 O 3 is used as a glass intermediate. The focus of this study is to characterize the B 2 O 3 -SrO-Al 2 O 3 host glass using X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), FT-IR, Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), and Optical Absorption techniques. FT-IR was performed to identify the functional groups of the glass matrix. DSC was utilized to determine Glass transition (T g ), Crystallization (T c ), and melting (T m ) temperatures. Using different heating rates, the activation energy, pre-exponential factor, and rate constant (k) were determined. Direct and indirect optical band gaps were calculated based on the measured UV-Visible absorption spectrum.