Elsevier

Physica B: Condensed Matter

Volume 597, 15 November 2020, 412358
Physica B: Condensed Matter

Influence of (Er3+, La3+, Ce4+) additions on physical and optical properties of 50CaO–50P2O5 glasses

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physb.2020.412358Get rights and content

Abstract

Calcium phosphate glass samples with the addition of 5 mol% of three different rare earth oxides (Erbium, Lanthanum and Cerium oxides) were made by melt quenching process. Effect of rare earth ions addition on structural, physical and optical properties has been investigated using density measurement, XRD diffraction, Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, ultra violet visible spectroscopy and Abbe Refractometer. The random short range order of synthesized glass samples was analyzed by XRD diffraction. The absorption spectra have been recorded and optical band gap energy was determined by using Tauc plotting. The band gap energy showed a decrease when 5 mol% of rare earth (Er2O3, La2O3, and CeO2) oxides were added to the host glass. Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR) spectrometer was applied to study the structural changes of the synthesized glasses. The density and refractive index of synthesized glasses was measured and related parameters were calculated. These values are compared with the un-doped metaphosphate glass. Based on measured density, the concentrations of added rare-earth ion is calculated. With an increase in ion concentration, the internuclear distance decreased leading to an increase in field strength.

Introduction

Rare earth ions added phosphate glasses have been given great attention by researchers for several years [[1], [2], [3], [4], [5]] for different potential applications such as optical fibers, optical amplifiers, glass to metal sealing, solid-state batteries, scintillators, 3D displays etc. Phosphate glasses, one of the oxide glasses, have special properties compared to silicate and borate glasses for example low processing temperature, high transmission in the UV region, high rare earth solubility, high thermal expansion, etc. [2,[5], [6], [7], [8]] make them very good candidates as a host matrix. The compositional flexibility and its dependence on the different properties of rare earth doped phosphate glasses have been one of the researchable areas.

Lee and Taylor [9] and Venkateswara and Shashikala [10] reported on different properties of alkaline earth (Ca, Ba) phosphate glasses such that optical, thermal and mechanical properties. The influence of the addition of rare earth elements on different properties of binary calcium phosphate glass was not well addressed.

In this work, we have reported the influence of the addition of different rare-earth (La, Ce, and Er) ions on calcium metaphosphate glasses on structural, physical and optical properties.

Section snippets

Experimental details

Glass compositions of 50 mol% P2O5-45 mol%CaO-5mol% RO (RO = Er2O3, CeO2, La2O3) were synthesized using melt quenching method. NH4H2PO4 (98%), CaCO3 (98%), Er2O3 (99.8%), CeO2 (99%), La2O3 (99.9%) were used as starting chemicals for preparation of glass samples. All the powder of the starting chemicals were precisely weighed in using digital analytical balance.

The batch compositions of the prepared glasses with their codes are given in Table 1. A batch of 10 gm of each composition was weighed

X-ray diffraction studies

The X-ray diffraction studies of the samples has been done to check their amorphous nature. The XRD pattern of synthesized glass samples is represented in Fig. 1. The hump detected near 20-30ᴼ is because of the short range order of glass samples and characteristic to all phosphate glasses [8]. Therefore the prepared samples do not have sharp peaks and totally glassy in nature.

Density and molar volume

Density and molar volume of the rare earth oxides (La, Er, and Ce) doped calcium phosphate glass samples measured and

Conclusions

Rare earth (Er3+, La3+, Ce4+) ions added calcium phosphate glasses were synthesized by melt quenching technique. The effect of rare-earth addition on structural, physical and optical properties of calcium phosphate glass was investigated. The results of the FTIR study showed that 5 mol% of rare earth (Lanthanum, Cerium, and Erbium) oxides added to the calcium phosphate glass did not affect the basic phosphate glass network. The study of XRD analyses showed that the glass samples (CPC, CPE and

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

References (19)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (0)

View full text