Physical, thermal and absorption traits of lithium strontium zinc borate glasses: sensitiveness on Dy3+ doping

Abstract

The development and ultimate acceptance of the glassy materials for the industrial applications depend directly on their ambient stability determined by the host compositions. Accordingly, some new types of dysprosium ions (Dy3+)-doped lithium strontium zinc borate (LSZB) glasses were prepared using the conventional melt quenching. The prepared glasses were characterized via different measurements to determine the sensitiveness of the varying Dy3+ doping levels on their physical, thermal and optical absorbance characteristics. The XRD analysis of the as-quenched samples confirmed their amorphous nature. The UV–Vis–NIR spectra of the glasses displayed nine absorption bands where the hypersensitive transition (6F11/2+6H9/2) was positioned around 1270 nm. In addition, the ASF, DASF and Tauc methods were used to evaluate the optical band gap energies of the studied glasses. The DTA results of the glasses revealed excellent thermal stability (Hurby parameter of 2.44 and stability against crystallization of 114) and glass-forming ability in the range of 1.34–2.44. The physical, structural, thermal and optical absorption properties of the studied glasses were observed to be highly sensitive to the Dy+3 doping levels. It was shown that by controlling the Dy3+ contents in the proposed compositions their overall traits can be tailored. The proposed glasses with excellent thermal stability, high transparency and very low signal loss indicated their potential for the optical fibres drawing. It is established that the present disclosure may contribute towards the development of the glass-based low loss optical fibres needed for various applied purposes.