Sol–gel preparation and characterization of Bi4(Si1−xGex)3O12 solid solutions

Molten core fabrication of bismuth germanium oxide Bi4Ge3O12 crystalline core fibers

“…Hence, the PXRD peak shifts are associated with a continuous change in Si/Ge ratio in the core crystals. This also correlates with the findings of Xie, et al , who reported a similar behavior while studying different BGSO compositions. For completeness, the cubic lattice parameters of the BSO crystal structure are 10.28 Å and those of the BGO structure are 10.52 Å .…”

“…Bi 4 Ge 3 O 12 (BGO) and Bi 4 Si 3 O 12 (BSO) are both known to crystallize with the same eulytine structure and are thus isostructural, where (SiO 4 ) 4À units can replace the (GeO 4 ) 4À units of the BGO eulytine crystal structure. 17,35 In addition, the BGO and BSO solid solutions of various Bi 4 (Ge 1-x Si x ) 3 O 12 (BGSO) compositions have been reported, [35][36][37] confirming the ability of silicon to replace germanium. In the case here, it was observed that silicon atoms were introduced in the core melt with a compositional gradient, and, hence, crystals with various compositions of the form Bi 4 (Ge 1-x Si x ) 3 O 12 were likely grown.…”

“…In addition to the discussion on substitution, the peak shifts observed in the PXRD diffractogram can be used to estimate the amount of SiO 2 substituted in the crystalline core, assuming a linear (Vegardian) dependency between peak shifts and silica concentration between BGO and BSO crystal structures. 37 Supposing that each peak position for the BSO crystal structure correspond to a full peak shift from the peak positions of the BGO crystal structure (i.e., correspond to 60 mol% of GeO 2 substituted by 60 mol% SiO 2 ), one can estimate the "theoretical" silica content. The peak shift from the 4 major peaks of the crystalline core sample obtained in this first experiment were used to estimate the silica content (see Table 1).…”

Structure and dielectric behaviour of Sr-modified Bi4Si3O12 thin films prepared via sol gel method

“…Bi 4 Si 3 O 12 ceramics are the most important scintillation materials which are widely used in high energy physics, nuclear medical imaging and computer tomography due to their good mechanical, chemical, electro-optical and the thermoluminescence properties [28,29]. Several attempts to synthesize bismuth silicate thin films have been reported via chemical vapour deposition (CVD) [30], sol-gel [10,31] and pulse laser deposition methods [32,33].…”