Investigation of structural, physical and optical properties of CeO2–Bi2O3–B2O3 glasses

xCeO2–30Bi2O3–(70−x) B2O3 glasses are synthesized by using the melt quench technique. A number of studies such as XRD, density, molar volume, optical band gap, refractive index and FTIR spectroscopy are employed to characterize the glasses. The band gap decreases from 2.15 to 1.61 eV, refractive index increases from 2.67 to 2.93 and density increases from 4.151 to 4.633 g/cm3. The decrease in band gap with CeO2 doping approaches the semiconductor behavior. FTIR spectroscopy reveals that incorporation of CeO2 into glass network helps to convert the structural units of [BO3] into [BO4] and results in Bi–O bond vibration of [BiO6].