Crystallization of ferroelectric LiNbO3 in TeO2 and a reactive glass matrix LiBO2-Nb2O5

It is known that the glasses comprising nano/micro meter sized crystallites of polar materials could be engineered to transmit light over a wide range of wavelengths. There are two different approaches via which one could achieve higher transparency. The first one would be to partially crystallize the glass in such a way that the crystallites are smaller than the wavelength of the light. Alternately, the glass-ceramics could be made transparent if there is minimal refractive index mismatch between the dispersoids and the host glass matrices. In the present work both the approaches have been adopted to obtain transparent glasses embedded with LiNbO3 crystallites. TeO2 glasses containing micrometer sized crystallites of LiNbO3 were fabricated and proved them to be ferroelectric and non-linear optic. The transparent glasses of (100-x) TeO2-x LiNbO3 (10 ≤ x ≥ 50) were fabricated by quenching their melts. These glasses were characterized for their structural and dielectric properties apart from their thermal characteristics