Development of a New Glass for both Visible and Near-Infrared Optical Applications

A glass system of composition 40P2O5-40ZnO-(20-x)Na2O-xCdO (where, x = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 mol%) was prepared using the conventional melt quenching technique. The glass formability of the prepared samples was inspected using XRD technique. Archimedes’ method was used to determine the density of the prepared glass samples then the molar volume was calculated. The optical spectroscopic investigations of the prepared glass samples were carried out over the spectral range (190-2500 nm). The proposed glass showed a successive transparency in both visible and near-IR ranges of spectrum till 2500 nm with considerably high transmission of about 78%. The refractive index of the glass samples with some other useful parameters such as dielectric constant, electric susceptibility and electronic polarizability of the prepared glass were evaluated. The results suggest the practicality of utilizing such new glass in the fabrication of optical supplies such as lenses and optical windows used for Nd:YAG lasers. The metallization criteria data of the prepared glass propose a good basis for predicting new nonlinear optical materials.