What is it about?
Glass formation in the TiO2-P2O5 system is unusual because it corresponds to a low concentration of the traditional network-forming phosphate component. It provides, however, the foundation for chemically durable high-refractive index materials for optoelectronic applications. We combined diffraction, NMR, Raman and ab initio molecular dynamics methods to uncover the structure. The findings show the prevalence of 5- and 6-coordinated Ti atoms and the coexistence of both 2- and 3-coordinated O atoms.
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Why is it important?
The results show a wide variety of structural motifs in the investigated titanium phosphate glasses, which suggests that structural variability is key to promoting vitrification in this atypical glass-forming system. The findings will provide a benchmark for investigating the structure of other glass-forming materials based on networks of higher-coordinated polyhedral units.
Perspectives
The TiO2-P2O5 system was reluctant to reveal its structural secrets. They were eventually uncovered by applying a variety of increasingly sophisticated experimental and computational methods.
Professor Philip S Salmon
University of Bath
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This page is a summary of: Titanium phosphate glasses: Beyond tetrahedral network structures, The Journal of Chemical Physics, December 2025, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0301521.
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