Compositional dependence thermal and optical properties of a novel germanate glass

A series of zinc lithium germanate glasses of the composition (45−x)Li2O–xZnO–55GeO2 have been synthesized via melt quenching technique. Dependencies of their thermal and optical properties on composition were investigated. It is found that the gradual replacement of Li2O by ZnO, decreases the glass transition temperature from 430 to 280 °C and increases the thermal stability (ΔT) of the studied glasses. The optical band gap Eopt also decreases from 2.31 to 1.40 eV with increasing the mole content of ZnO.