Structural and optical properties of rare-earths doped barium bismuth borate glasses

Recently, great importance has been devoted to different glass systems doped with rare-earth ions because of their peculiar properties, in particular in the field of high-energy physics for particle energy measurement. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the optical and physical properties of Dy3 +, Er3 +, Nd3 + doped glasses belonging to the 20BaO-20Bi2O3-60B2O3 system in which several rare-earths oxide concentrations were added to encounter the requirements for particle energy measurement. High density, low refractive index, high emission intensity (or high scintillation yield) are required for this purpose. Moreover, molar volume, glass transition and melting temperatures, X-ray diffraction and Raman spectra were measured and discussed in order to characterize the glass state. All the properties measured have shown a non-linear trend moving from 1 mol% to 10 mol% of rare-earths content. At the same time comparison between the trend derived by samples with same stoichiometry but containing different rare earths highlight different behaviors. In particular the highest density has been reached with the glass where Dy2O3 is at 2,5 mol%.