Investigation of Alkali Oxides Effect on Various Properties of Borosilicate Glasses

Abstract

Three different alkali metal oxide containing borosilicate glasses are synthesized by melt quench technique. The as quenched glasses are characterized by x-ray diffraction, Fourier Transform infra-red spectroscopy, UV-Visible spectroscopy, Impedance spectroscopy and Vicker’s hardness tester to check their applicability as substrate materials in thin film solar cell applications. The optical band gap is comparable to state of the art glasses i.e. 4.0 eV. The conductivity of the glasses is observed to be of order of 10-6 S/cm at 400ᴼC. The hardness of the glasses decreases as K20S<Na20S<Li20S due to ionic bonding character increases with increasing atomic number.