Effect of Na2O on physical, structural and electrical properties of borate glasses

Borate-based glasses have been gained significant interest owing to their utilization in applications like solar energy converters, optical fibers, radiation shielding, solid-state batteries, etc. This work reports xNa(2)O center dot(100-x)B2O3; x = 0, 10 & 20 (mol%) glasses prepared via conventional melt-quenching technique. Sodium oxide (Na2O) has been used as a network modifier. The obtained glasses are characterized using X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The network structure of prepared samples was found dependent on the sodium content in glass compositions. Variation in the density, molar volume (V-m) and crystalline volume (V-c) of the samples reveal substitution of the sodium atoms. Conductivity in the samples under reference has been studied in the frequency range from 10(3) Hz to 10(7) Hz and in the temperature range from 240 degrees C to 380 degrees C, by fitting the measured data with theoretical model. The theoretical fitting reveals that the variation in conductivity with frequency for all samples obeys Jonscher's power law. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.