Morphogenesis of Silicovanadate Glasses: Investigation of Physical Properties

Abstract

In this article, we demonstrate the synthesis and various characterizations of silicovanadate glasses of xSiO2 (100-x)V2O5 for x = (10-50) mol%, glasses which are prepared by the melt quenching method. FTIR spectra analysis confirms dominant chemical bonds among silicon, vanadium, and oxygen elements as expected. The assigned chemical bonds are Si-O-Si, O-Si-O, V-O-V, V=O, Si-O-V, O-H from FTIR spectra. The IR spectra of all glass specimens were baseline corrected and deconvoluted to distinct peaks of chemical bonds in overlapped Gaussians with employing computer program. The chemical bond's position shifted and affected due to the addition of vanadium pentaoxide by the heat treatment process. The X-ray diffractions (XRD) patterns of glass samples exhibit partial crystalline nature for 10S90V and 50S50V that is influenced by high-temperature application. The differential thermal analysis (DTA) of base and heat-treated specimen determines the glass transition (Tg), crystallization, and liquidus temperature with prominent exothermic and endothermic reactions. It is seen that the pH of the glass specimens abruptly changes due to the surface effect of V2O5 while bulk effects become robust after about 30 minutes. The measured hardness of three glass samples shows high HV-values and a slight linear increment is observed for higher V2O5 contents. The current-voltage (I-V) characteristic connected to the electrical conductivity of the glass specimen (20S80V) shows a relatively higher and non-linear trend of conductivity which reveals the behavior of a semiconductor. Moreover, temperature-dependent electrical resistivity measurement of the same sample (20S80V) manifests the semiconducting nature up to 427 °C as well.