Physical, Structural, and Optical Properties of ZrO2 Reinforced (100-x-y)[SrTiO3]-x[2B2O3.SiO2]-y[ZrO2] Glasses

Several attempts were made to fabricate zirconia (ZrO2) reinforced strontium titanate (SrTiO3) borosilicate glasses in the system (100-x-y)[SrTiO3]-x[2B(2)O(3).SiO2]-y[ZrO2] (38 <= x <= 39, 0 <= y <= 4 by mole %) via a rapid melt-quenching method. To check the amorphous behaviour of the prepared glasses, XRD measurements were performed. Further, density of the bulk transparent glasses was evaluated by liquid-displacement method (Archimedes' principle) and found to be in the range of 2.6068-3.0720 gcm(-3). To study the effect of ZrO2 doping on the fabricated glasses, various physical parameters such as oxygen molar volume (O-mv), molar volume (V-m), oxygen packing density (O-PD), ion-concentrations (N), etc. were determined. Further, to investigate the molecular structure, and bonding information, FTIR spectroscopy was performed. Additionally, to determine the various optical properties, the UV-visible spectroscopy was also performed, and with the help of Davis-Mott plots, increasing optical band gap energies were obtained in the range of 4.29-4.78 eV. Besides these parameters, an optical dielectric constant (epsilon), and average refractive index (eta) were determined which lies within the increasing range of 120.0374-207.3341 and 1.9269-2.0690 respectively. Moreover, to elaborate the structure of the fabricated glasses, Si-29 and B-11 MAS SSNMR spectra were recorded which shows the formation of silicate networks which became highly polymerized with increasing concentrations of ZrO2.