TY - CONF A1 - de Camargo, Andrea T1 - Structure-property correlations in RE-doped fluoride-phosphate glasses sought by NMR, EPR & PL N2 - As the development of optimized glass compositions by traditional trial-and-error methods is laborious, expensive, and time consuming, it is desirable to gather fundamental understanding of structure and to develop structure-property relation models, which allow best and faster choices. Particularly, when it comes to optical applications of glasses doped with emissive trivalent rare earth ions (RE), the chemical environmental around the ions will have a direct influence on the radiative/non-radiative emission probabilities. The vibrational environment and the chemical nature of the bonds in the first coordination sphere of the ions can be tailored, to some extent, based on structural information given by magnetic resonance (NMR and EPR) techniques associated to Raman and photophysical characterization. For the past 5 years, one of the interests of my research group at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, has been the development of high-density fluoride-phosphate glasses as promising UV and X-ray scintillator materials. The targeted glasses offer a lower vibrational energy, less hygroscopic fluoride environment for the RE ions whereas the phosphate network provides improved mechanical and chemical stability than a purely fluoride glass matrix. Different sets of glasses, based on the compositional system (Ba/Sr)F2-M(PO3)3-MF3-(Sc/Y)F3 where M = Al, In, Ga, and the phosphate component is substituted by the fluoride analogue in 10-30 mol%, were investigated, using Sc3+, Y3+, and the Eu3+ and Yb3+ dopants, as structural probes. Overall, results show that the desired RE coordination by F, at a given F/P ratio, is proportional to the atomic mass of M (In> Ga> Al) and that the Ga- and In- based systems differ from the Al- one by near absence of P-O-P network linkages i.e, the network structures are dominated by Ga-O-P or In-O-P linkages as evidenced by 31P MAS-NMR and Raman. These results are nicely corroborated by observation of decreased intensity in the vibronic band of Eu3+ and significant increase in the excited state lifetime values. Radioluminescence studies were carried out for a series of In-based glasses doped with Ce3+ and Tb3+ yielding intense emissions in the blue and green, respectively, compatible to the spectral region of highest sensitivity of radiation sensor detectors. The aim of the presentation is to show how powerful the combination of NMR, EPR, Raman and PLE spectroscopies can be to provide structural information and to present the perspectives for their introduction in the research agenda of Division 5.6 – Glass, which I now lead, at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin, Germany. T2 - GOMD 2024 - Glass and Optical Division Meeting, ACerS CY - Las Vegas, NV, USA DA - 19.05.2024 KW - Glass Digital KW - Glasses KW - Robotic melting PY - 2024 AN - OPUS4-60357 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -