Oxide glasses are made of a network of glass former polyhedra, and modifiers which have a role in neutralizing the charge of the glass former polyhedra or depolymerize the glass network. The effect of the modifier content on the structure and properties of the glass are to some extent, well known. However, the effect of the type of modifiers on the clustering and the tendency to form a phase separation in the glass is not investigated in detail and still not fully understood until now. Here, we use molecular dynamics to investigate the effect of the modifier type on the structure and the clustering tendency of a series of modified silicate glasses. Specifically, we show that the tendency of modifier -- modifier cluster formation is linked to the modifier size and modifier -- oxygen bond strength. The effect of different modifiers on the short- and medium-range structure of the glass is also discussed. This allows us to get an overview of the effect of cations nature on the properties of the glass and opens a new window for further development and optimization of the glass properties.
A rare-earth rich aluminoborosilicate glass of composition (given in wt.%): 50.68 SiO2 - 4.25 Al2O3 - 8.50 B2O3 - 12.19 M2O - 4.84 M'O - 3.19 ZrO2 - 16.35 Nd2O3 (where M and M' are respectively an alkali and alkaline earth cation) is currently under study as potential nuclear waste form. In this work, we were interested in the structure of this glass in relation with the modifier cation type. Two different glass series were elaborated by changing separately the nature of the alkaline (M=Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs) and the alkaline-earth (M'=Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba) ions and different structural studies were int…
Structure and properties of magnesium silicate and borate melts and glasses were investigated by using newly parameterized interaction potentials in molecular dynamics simulations and compared with those of calcium silicate and borate. The competition between the depolymerization of the silica network and the formation of new bonds with modifier ions leads to the enhancement of the elastic moduli with increasing modifier content in alkaline earth silicate glasses. Compared with calcium silicate, the higher elastic moduli of magnesium silicate result from a higher connectivity of the overall gl…
Individual cationic site--energies are explicitly determined from molecular dynamics simulations of alkali silicate glasses, and the properties and relevance of this local energetics to ion transport are studied. The absence of relaxations on the timescale of ion transport proves the validity of a static description of the energy landscape, as it is generally used in hopping models. The Coulomb interaction among the cations turns out essential to obtain an average energy landscape in agreement with typical simplified hopping models. Strong correlations exist both between neighboring sites and …
The mixed-alkali effect on the cation dynamics in silicate glasses is analyzed via molecular dynamics simulations. Observations suggest a description of the dynamics in terms of stable sites mostly specific to one ionic species. As main contributions to the mixed--alkali slowdown longer residence times and an increased probability of correlated backjumps are identified. The slowdown is related to the limited accessibility of foreign sites. The mismatch experienced in a foreign site is stronger and more retarding for the larger ions, the smaller ions can be temporarily accommodated. Also correl…
For small tension the response of a solid to an applied stress is given by Hooke's law. Outside this linear regime the relation between stress and strain is no longer universal and at present there is no satisfactory insight on how to connect for disordered materials the stress-strain relation to the microscopic properties of the system. Here we use atomistic computer simulations to establish this connection for the case of silicate glasses containing modifiers. By probing how in the highly non-linear regime the stress-strain curve depends on composition, we are able to identify the microscopi…
The glass transition temperature (Tg) is the temperature, after which the supercooled liquid undergoes a dynamical arrest. Usually, the glass network modifiers (e.g., Na2O) affect the behavior of Tg. However, in aluminosilicate glasses, the effect of different modifiers on Tg is still unclear and show an anomalous behavior. Here, based on molecular dynamics simulations, we show that the glass transition temperature decreases with increasing charge balancing cations field strength (FS) in the aluminosilicate glasses, which is an anomalous behavior as compared to other oxide glasses. The results…
The local structural environment and the spatial distribution of iron and aluminum ions in sodosilicate glasses with composition NaFexAl1-xSi2O6 (x = 1, 0.8, 0.5 and 0) is studied by high-resolution neutron diffraction combined with structural modeling using the Empirical Potential Structure Refinement (EPSR) code. This work gives evidence of differences in the structural behavior of Al3+ and Fe3+, which are both often considered to act as network formers in charge-balanced compositions. The short-range environment and the structural role of the two cations are not composition dependent, and h…
The powdery nature and high alkali content of vegetable ashes make them ideal raw materials to be used as modifiers of silicate compositions (glasses, enamels and ceramics). Their utilisation since ancient times is described in the literature of the history of glasses, but studies on the analyses of their composition are still limited. We discuss here the compositions of tree and shrub ashes (wattle, hawthorn, oak, green oak, olive wood, elm, poplar, apple tree, vine shoot), of plants (carex, fern, dogwood), of cereals (wheat, maize, rice), threshing waste and hay, mainly harvested in Maconnai…
The slow advance of a crack in sodo-silicate glasses was studied at nanometer scale by in situ and real time atomic force microscopy (AFM) in a well controlled atmosphere. An enhanced diffusion of sodium ions in the stress gradient field at the submicrometric vicinity of the crack tip was revealed through several effects: growth of nodules in AFM height images, changes in the AFM tip/sample energy dissipation. The nodules patterns revealed a dewetting phenomenon evidenced by 'breath figures'. Complementary chemical micro-analyses were done. These experimental results were explained by a two-st…
An aluminoborosilicate glass, containing high amount of rare earth (RE) accordingly to the following composition 50.68 SiO2 - 4.25 Al2O3 - 8.50 B2O3 - 12.19 Na2O - 4.84 CaO - 3.19 ZrO2 - 16.35 RE2O3 (wt.%), is currently under study for the immobilization of nuclear waste solutions. In this work, we wanted to investigate the effect of changing the RE cation type on the glass structure and on its crystallization behavior. For this purpose, a glass series was elaborated in which the nature of the RE is varying from lanthanum to lutetium. In this glass series, only little effect was observed on th…
A complex rare-earth rich aluminoborosilicate glass has been proved to be a good candidate for the immobilization of new high level radioactive wastes. A simplified seven-oxides composition of this glass was selected for this study. In this system, sodium and calcium cations were supposed in other works to simulate respectively all the other alkali (R+=Li+, Rb+, Cs+) and alkaline-earth (R'2+=Sr2+, Ba2+) cations present in the complex glass composition. Moreover, neodymium or lanthanum are used here to simulate all the rare-earths and actinides occurring in waste solutions. In order to study th…
In recent years, tailoring the properties of bioactive glasses through compositional design have become the subject of widespread interest for their use in medical application, e.g., tissue regeneration. Understanding the mixed alkali effect (MAE) in oxide glasses is of fundamental importance for tailoring the glass compositions to control the mobility of ions and, therefore, the glass properties that depend on it, such as ion release, glass transition temperature, and ionic conductivity. However, most of the previously designed bioactive glasses were based on trial-and-error, which is due to …
Serpentine minerals are important components of metamorphic rocks and promising geo-materials for nanotechnology. Lizardite, the most abundant serpentine mineral, can be transformed into chlorite during metamorphism. This intriguing phase transformation should affect the deformation behavior during aseismic creep and slow slip at the base of the subduction zone, but has not been understood structurally and chemically at the atomic scale. Here we visualized cations and oxygen atoms using the state-of-the-art low-dose scanning transmission electron microscopy and found that restructuring mainly …
The powdery nature and high alkali content of vegetable ashes make them ideal raw materials to be used as modifiers of silicate compositions (glasses, enamels and ceramics). Their utilisation since ancient times is described in the literature of the history of glasses, but studies on the analyses of their composition are still limited. We discuss here the compositions of tree and shrub ashes (wattle, hawthorn, oak, green oak, olive wood, elm, poplar, apple tree, vine shoot), of plants (carex, fern, dogwood), of cereals (wheat, maize, rice), threshing waste and hay, mainly harvested in Maconnai…
The structure and transport properties of SiO2-Al2O3 melts containing 13 mol% and 47 mol% Al2O3 are investigated by means of large scale molecular dynamics computer simulations. The interactions between the atoms are modelled by a pair potential which is a modified version of the one proposed by Kramer et al. [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 64, 6435 (1991)]. Fully equilibrated melts in the temperature range 6000 K >= T > 2000 K are considered as well as glass configurations, that were obtained by a rapid quench from the lowest melt temperatures. Each system is simulated at two different densities in order …
We apply a recently developed optimization scheme to obtain effective potentials for alkali and alkaline-earth aluminosilicate glasses that contains lithium, sodium, potassium, or calcium as modifiers. As input data for the optimization, we used the radial distribution functions of the liquid at high temperature generated by means of ab initio molecular dynamics simulations and density and elastic modulus of glass at room temperature from experiments. The new interaction potentials are able to reproduce reliably the structure and various mechanical and vibrational properties over a wide range …
Terahertz-driven four-wave mixing at glass surfaces: Probing vibrational resonances and structural regimes
Université Savoie Mont Blanc, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble INP, and CNRS（萨瓦蒙布朗大学、格勒诺布尔阿尔卑斯大学、格勒诺布尔理工学院和法国国家科学研究中心）；University of Bordeaux and CNRS（波尔多大学和法国国家科学研究中心）
