An investigation on physical, thermal, linear, non-linear optical and structural properties of (70–x)B2O3-10ZnO-10CdO-10BaO-xBi2O3 glasses

(70–x)B2O3-10ZnO-10CdO-10BaO-xBi2O3 glasses were prepared using melt quenching technique. The scanning electron micrograph of the studied glasses shows the surface without any existence of microstructures exhibiting a feature of amorphous phase. X-ray diffraction studies revealed amorphous nature of prepared glasses. The increment in both molar volume and density of glass samples as Bi2O3 content increases indicates that a more opened structure is formed with higher content of Bi2O3. The Tg value decreases as a function of Bi2O3 content exhibiting increase in number of non-bridging oxygen atoms. The obtained values of band gap energy and Urbach energy from both Tauc model and ASF model are in good agreement with each other. The decrease in the Eopt may also be due to the high concentration of NBO within the glass network. This causes a disordered glass structure arrangement which increases the excitation tendency of the electrons to the conduction band through the extension of the localized state in the gap. From the obtained values of αO2-\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha_{{O^{2 - } }}$$\end{document},Λ and A, the present glasses fall in the group (2) i.e., normal ionic (basic) oxides. It is concluded that all the prepared glasses have Ic > 88% which implies that they are highly ionic in character. The calculated non-linear optical parameters of the present glasses n2,χ(1) and χ(3) were found to increase with composition of the glass. The present glasses have various advantages like higher density; the glasses possess a higher polarizability with an increase in refractive index making desirable for non-linear optical applications.