Fabrication of surrogate glasses with tektite composition

Abstract

Surrogate glasses were fabricated by the sol–gel process aiming to produce compositions similar to naturally occurring tektite. The volatile species in the xerogel samples were removed by heat treatments. All products were characterized by thermal analysis, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and energy dispersive spectroscopic techniques. The elemental distribution in the surrogates was found to be more homogeneous than the one observed in natural materials. This work presents an alternative to generate target materials for the validation of techniques aimed to comminute samples in the nuclear forensics field, making the comparison between the pre and post-treatments more viable.