A Structural Study of Barium Vanadate Glasses

The aims of this study are two-fold. Firstly, to determine the structural changes that occur in barium vanadate glasses with increasing modifier content, and secondly, to understand the structural effect of adding SiO2 to the glass network. To achieve this we propose to study a series of barium vanadate glasses, and a series of SiO2 modified glasses, using neutron and X-ray diffraction (making use of complementary beamtime on I15-1). Building upon previous structural studies of non-traditional oxide glass formers, a combination of direct fitting and computational modelling will be used to determine the vanadium-oxygen and barium-oxygen coordination numbers, and investigate the medium range order. The knowledge gained will be combined with functional properties, such as Tg, density, optical response and electrical conductivity, to develop structure-property relationships that will inform composition development for applications.