Regularities of the formation of the microstructure of phosphate glasses doped with rare-earth elements

Abstract

Intensive research into the various types of glassy materials (GMs) is being conducted due to their widespread application in many areas of modern engineering. However, despite the progress made in understanding the internal structure of GMs on the nanometer scale, the problem of the structure of long-range order on the nano/micro/macro scale remains very hypothetical. Therefore, we have studied the nano-microstructure of a large set of GMs belonging to the PhGs-R2O3 system, where R is rare earth metals (Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Dy, Ho, Er, Yb) and film/substrate structures (P2O5⋅SiO2/SLG; P2O5⋅SiO2⋅Nd2O3/SLG, SLG is soda-lime-glass). We have shown that regardless of type of GMs, common cluster-icosahedral-fractal regularities take place during the formation of GMs. Close similarity between our results and the images of the literature data makes it possible to express an opinion of the cluster-fractal structure of GMs of different nature for both bulk glasses and film/substrate structures.