Influence of Hydroxyl Group on <scp>IR</scp> Transparency of Tellurite‐Based Glasses

Abstract

A study of the glass properties with two opposite levels of hydroxyl content is presented for two different tellurite glass families with molar composition 70TeO 2 ‐10Bi 2 O 3 ‐20ZnO and 80TeO 2 ‐20Nb 2 O 5 . We show that melting tellurite‐based glasses in a dried‐oxidant atmosphere (relative humidity &lt;1%) reduces drastically the OH impurities. The effect of reducing the OH content on the glass properties such as characteristic temperatures, crystallization stability (ΔT), density, and microhardness is investigated.