Advancing the Vibrational Spectroscopy of Silicate Glasses

Richard C. Haworth

This work is part of a project aimed at strengthening vibrational spectroscopy as a tool for structural characterisation of glasses, and in particular, the interpretation of vibrational spectra of silicate glasses. Great efforts have been made towards understanding the vibrational spectra of vitreous (v) SiO₂, with the most recent spectra from molecular dynamics models comparing well with the effective vibrational density of states (VDOS), G(ω), from inelastic neutron scattering (INS) data. This presentation considers (i) the sol-gel (sg) synthesis of O¹⁸ isotopically substituted SiO₂ glasses, (ii) a comparison of the structure factors of v-SiO₂ and sg-SiO2 from x-ray scattering data, and (iii) G(ω), Raman, and IR spectra of sg-SiO₂ and sg-SiO¹⁸₂. It is concluded that sol-gel processes can be exploited to produce a large quantity of SiO¹⁸₂ glass, and that the mass contrast between the oxygen isotopes is sufficient to produce an observed shift in vibrational frequencies, between SiO₂ and SiO¹⁸₂ spectra.

 

 

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