ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Breaking Zachariasen rules - the structure of barium zirconium fluoride glasses

Abstract: Glass is an essential material with applications that are dominated by oxides, but fluoride glasses (based on barium zirconium fluorides, "ZBLAN" glasses) have key applications for infrared transmission and rare earth luminescence. Although they have ionic bonding their structures do not follow the "Zachariasen rules" which predict small, well-defined network forming units. Instead ZBLAN glasses have Zr with large coordination numbers of 7 and 8. Given the limited previous structural studies of ZBLAN glasses it is important to carry out a comprehensive study using neutron and x-ray diffraction in order to better understand the structural basis for glass formation. The diffraction data will be complemented by molecular dynamics modelling, where recent work by the proposer has suggested the Zr coordination polyhedra have square antiprism geometry

Principal Investigator: Dr Gavin Mountjoy
Experimenter: Miss Laura Swansbury
Experimenter: Mr Louis Forto Chungong
Experimenter: Dr Richard Martin
Experimenter: Professor Jacqueline Johnson
Experimenter: Mr Maha Rai
Experimenter: Dr Alex Hannon

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1520437

ISIS Experiment Number: RB1520437

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Dr Gavin Mountjoy et al; (2016): Breaking Zachariasen rules - the structure of barium zirconium fluoride glasses, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1520437

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.