Neodymium-Doped Multi-Component Borate/Phosphate Glasses for NIR Solid-State Material Applications

Abstract

Multi-component borate/phosphate glasses doped with 1 mol% Nd2O3 content have been prepared using conventional melt quenching technique to study their physical, optical properties. The physical parameters such as the density, molar volume, ion concentration, polaron radius, inter-ionic distance, and field strength were calculated and compared with other glasses. The density was studied using toluene as immersion liquid and the refractive index of the glass was measured using Abbe’s refractometer. An X-ray diffraction study was carried out to confirm the amorphous structure of the prepared glass samples. The structural properties were discussed using the FTIR spectroscopy results. FTIR data show the functional groups of various glass formers used in the present glass using the beam of infrared radiations. The absorption spectra are used to investigate the optical band gap values and structural disorder observed in synthesized glass samples. UV–Vis absorption spectra of the glass show thirteen significant peaks. Thirteen well-defined absorption bands from UV–VIS absorption spectra show the transition from the ground state (4I3/2) to several excited states of Nd3+. The hypersensitive transition (2G7/2+4G5/2) was positioned around 581 nm. In addition, the Tauc method was employed to evaluate the optical band gap energies of the prepared glasses. Electronic polarizability of the oxide ion and optical basicity of synthesized glasses were calculated using optical band gap and compared with other glass samples. Analysis of Photoluminescence will be studied further.