Elaboration and Structural Investigation of Iron (III) Phosphate Glasses

Abstract

The regular melting-quenching method allowed isolating very large vitreous domains within the ternary system Li2O- P2O5-Fe2O3 at 1100˚C. The vitrification and crystallization effects are discussed in terms of phosphorus pentaoxide concentration (mol%). In the course of the present study, we analyzed chemical durability along the glass domain and many sample glasses were isolated. We noticed that our compounds demonstrated very high chemical resistance to attack, even with very highly concentrated mineral acid solutions. This behavior can be assigned to the presence of poorly crystalline phases in these glasses, which tended to increase as the Fe2O3 content increased. This property is a prerequisite for many interesting industrial applications. XRD, IR spectroscopy and SEM micrographs allowed an efficient investigation of the structural changes versus composition within ternary diagrams. The results were found to be consistent with the regular structural changes of phosphate glasses.