Thermal lens versus DTA measurements for glass transition analysis of fluoride glasses

In this work thermal lens spectrometry is applied to study fluoride glasses as a function of temperature. The experiments, in the temperature range between 20 and 300 °C, were performed to determine how the thermal lens technique can be compared with conventional differential thermal analyses (DTA) method. The results showed that the temperature dependence of the thermal lens signal amplitude provided a better definition in locating the glass transition as compared to the DTA data. We propose that the technique can be applied for the investigation of the phase transitions of glasses.