• Wasiucionek, Marek
• Gierlotka, S.
• Nowiński, Jan
• Gorzkowska, I.
• Wewior, L.
• Garbarczyk, Jerzy
• Pietrzak, Tomasz

Abstract

Glasses under study were prepared by a standard press quenching technique. Differential thermal analysis (DTA) measurements have shown that the as-obtained glasses are stable up to 530 °C. The DTA traces contain three thermal events: a baseline shift due to the glass transition followed by two distinct exothermic peaks related to crystallization processes. The positions of maxima of those peaks obey a Kissinger formula with the activation energy values: 3.7 ± 0.1 eV, 4.3 ± 0.2 eV, respectively. Heating of the samples to about 620 °C leads to their nanocrystallization. The average grain size in nanocrystalline samples as estimated from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) is between 60 and 70 nm. The nanocrystallized samples have two important advantages: they are stable to at least 660 °C and their electronic conductivity at room temperature is substantially higher than that of the as-prepared glasses (1.2·10− 7 S/cm vs. 1.5·10− 8 S/cm).

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• grain
• grain size
• scanning electron microscopy
• x-ray diffraction
• glass
• glass
• activation
• crystallization
• differential thermal analysis
• quenching