The origin of electrooptical sensitivity of glassy materials: crystal motifs in glasses

Abstract The results of studying electrooptical Kerr sensitivity in heavy metal silicate and phosphate glasses and glass-ceramics are presented. A niobium–lithium-silicate glass demonstrating a record Kerr coefficient (266×10−16 m/V2) has been formed. Formation of the transparent glass-ceramics containing electrooptical sodium niobate microcrystals has been studied, and glass-ceramics demonstrating Kerr coefficients higher than 6000×10−16 m/V2 have been elaborated. On the base of the effective medium approximation, it is shown that the Kerr coefficient of these glass-ceramics depends on the volume fraction of sodium niobate microcrystals, vc as a linear function of vc(1−vc)−2 A conception of the origin of electrooptical sensitivity of glasses is proposed. This conception is based on the hypothesis that in glasses there exist regions with exactly crystalline ordering within 2–3 coordination spheres, with these regions having no phase boundaries. These regions are named the crystal motifs (CM). Due to the highly effective mechanism of nuclear polarizability of the electrooptical crystals, the motifs with the symmetry of such crystals are responsible for high permittivity and Kerr sensitivity of the glasses, and they play a role of pre-nuclei while electrooptical glass-ceramics are forming under glass heat treatment. It has been found that synthesized barium-titanate-silicate and niobium–lithium-phosphate glasses demonstrate extremely low Kerr coefficients, and they do not form transparent glass-ceramics with any electrooptical precipitates. This contradicts literature data and is explained by the difference in the conditions of glass synthesis, which are supposed to be responsible for the formation of proper CMs.