Thermal and structural properties of Eu₂O₃ doped Y₂O₃-AlO₃-BbO₃-B₂O₃-SiO₂ glasses

Europium doped Y₂O₃-AhO₃-BbO₃-B₂O₃-SiO₂ (YABiBS) glasses having different compositions were synthesized by using the melt - quenching method. These glasses were characterized by structural and thermal properties like X-ray Diffraction, Differential Thermal Analysis and FT-IR. The X-ray diffraction spectrum is recorded on a Diffractometer with XRD-6100 SHIMADZU. The Fourier transform infrared analysis is carried out using SHIMADZU-lRAffinity-1SFT-IR spectrophotometer. Differential Thermal analysis of powder sample is performed on SHIMADZU DTG-60H. The glassy nature of these glasses has been confirmed through XRD spectral measurement. FTIR spectra reveal the presence of various fundamental vibrational units such as BO₃ and BO₄ in the prepared glasses. The thermodynamic properties of these glasses are presented by the DTA curves. The transition temperature (T_g), onset crystallization temperature (T_x) and crystallization temperature (T_c) of these glasses were derived by marking the intersection of two tangents respectively. The temperature difference value (ΔT=T_g- T_x) can be employed as a criterion to measure glass thermal stability. Here another two thermal parameters proposed by Saad and Poulain are S and H are discussed. The values of S and ΔT are to evaluate thermal stability and control crystallization process of glasses. The magnitude of glass stability parameter H is the tendency of resistance against devitrification. The high values of these parameters compared to the other silicate glasses revealing that titled glasses have good thermal stability against crystallization for drawing glass fibers in developing optical fibre devices. (author)