Studying nanocrystallization behaviour of different inorganic glasses using Transmission Electron Microscopy

Abstract

Nano technology and nano materials are considered to be the key technologies of the 21^st century. Among the nano materials, glass ceramics are expected to play a major role, especially for optical applications. Glass-ceramics containing metal fluorides crystals with crystalline sizes 5 to 50 nm are considered to be materials with high potential for numerous photonic applications [1,2,3]. Crystals in this size range and narrow size distribution can only be obtained in multicomponent systems when the interface formed during nucleation and crystal growth acts as diffusional barrier that restricts crystal growth. In this present work, using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) we studied the nanocrystallization behaviour of two glass systems of silicate compositions in one of which (1) crystalline barium fluoride and in other (2) lanthanum fluoride precipitated.