The improvement of the amorphous environment of the germanate–tellurate glasses in the presence of the gadolinium ions

Glasses in the system xGd2O3·(100 − x)[TeO2·GeO2] with 0 ≤ x ≤ 50 mol% have been prepared from melt quenching method. In this paper, we investigated changes of the coordination numbers of germanium, tellurium, and gadolinium ions by investigations of FTIR, EPR, and UV–VIS spectroscopy. By analyzing the structural changes resulted from the IR spectra we found that the bending modes of [GeO4] structural units and the deformed modes of the Te–O–Te linkages produce intercalation of the [GdOn] entities in the germanate–tellurate chain network and densification of the glasses by increasing the number of [GeO6] structural units. EPR spectra of the studied samples reveal that the gadolinium ions play a role of network former. The UV–VIS spectra show broad UV absorption bands located in the 250–350 nm region. Their intensity increase with the increasing of Gd2O3 content showing that these stronger transitions can be due to the presence of the O=Ge bonds (n–π* excitations) of [GeO5] structural units. The [GeO5] structural units are more stable thermodynamically than their analogues and the [GeO6] structural units produce the improvement of the amorphous character of these glasses.