Raman scattering boson peak and differential scanning calorimetry studies of the glass transition in tellurium-zinc oxide glasses

Raman scattering and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements have been carried out on four mixed tellurium-zinc oxide (TeO2)1-x(ZnO)x (x = 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4) glasses under variable temperature, with particular attention being given to the respective glass transition region. From the DSC measurements, the glass transition temperature Tg has been determined for each glass, showing a monotonous decrease of Tg with increasing ZnO content. The Raman study is focused on the low-frequency band of the glasses, the so-called boson peak (BP), whose frequency undergoes an abrupt decrease at a temperature Td very close to the respective Tg values obtained by DSC. These results show that the BP is highly sensitive to dynamical effects over the glass transition and provides a means for an equally reliable (to DSC) determination of Tg in tellurite glasses and other network glasses. The discontinuous temperature dependence of the BP frequency at the glass transition, along with the absence of such a behaviour by the high-frequency Raman bands (due to local atomic vibrations), indicates that marked changes of the medium range order (MRO) occur at Tg and confirms the correlation between the BP and the MRO of glasses.