Investigation on the kinetics of devitrification of GeS₂-based glasses

We studied the devitrification kinetics for the binary (80GeS₂–20Ga₂S₃, mol%) and ternary (77GeS₂–15Ga₂S₃–6CsI, mol%) glass compositions using the differential thermal analysis (DTA) technique. The overall activation energies for devitrification for these two types of glasses were determined by using the Kissinger method and the Johnson–Mehl–Avrami equation from the DTA data. The t-t-t curves were calculated using the activation energy for devitrification for each composition derived from the DTA experiments. The experimental evidences have shown that the incorporation of SnS₂ and Sb₂S₃ in a ternary-based GeS₂ glass slows down the overall devitrification rate significantly, which is confirmed by the reduction in the overall area under the crystallization exotherm.