Abstract The current work used the traditional melt quenching technique to prepare Sodium Borosilicate containing Ge 2 O 3 glasses doped with Nd 2 O 3 samples. The prepared samples were characterized using different spectroscopic methods. The glassy nature of Na 2 B 4 O 7 -SiO 2 -(15-X) Ge 2 O 3 -(X) Nd 2 O 3 ; the value of X varies between 0 and 2.5, has been confirmed by XRD. It was found that the glass density increased with the increment of Nd 2 O 3 content in the samples. FTIR spectroscopy investigation indicates that the mol% of bridging oxygen atoms decreases as the number of BO4 structural groups in silicate and Ge 3+ ion networks increases in response to the rising Nd 2 O 3 content. More bridging bonds develop between BO 3 units and SiO 4 after adding Nd 2 O 3 to germanium borosilicate glass at over 2 mol% concentration. The thermal analysis proves the thermal stability and the high glass transition temperature. The UV–Vis spectra indicate high transparency across a broad range, spanning from the infrared to the visible region. Additionally, the refractive index varies between 2.35 for the undoped sample to 2.55 for the sample doped with 1% of Nd 3+ . Also, it was found that the optical band gap energy increased with the increase of Nd 3+ content from 3.19 to 3.24. Both up-conversion and down-conversion had been accomplished by photoluminescence, the PL shows bands shift between 1267 and 1273nm in the IR region according to the change in the doping concentration. The evidence demonstrates that the current system is highly versatile and can effectively serve a broad spectrum of biological, optical, and luminescent applications.
Mundher et al. (Fri,) studied this question.