Author(s)

Nada ElBaz¹, Gomaa El-Damrawi^1*, Amr M. Abdelghany²

¹Glass Research Group, Faculty of Science, Physics Department, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt.
²Spectroscopy Department, Physics Division, National Research Centre, Giza, Egypt.

A new type of cerium borate glass-ceramic is prepared and studied. The microstructure and crystallization behaviors of the glass samples were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), electron diffraction (ED), and ³¹P NMR spectroscopy. The microstructures of samples contain <1 mol% CeO₂ are amorphous in nature. More addition of CeO₂ transforms the glass to glass-ceramics without thermal annealing. The morphological change of the microstructure of these materials was followed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The obtained results have revealed that the addition of more than 0.8 mol% CeO₂ can promote nucleation and crystallization routes that are combined with the establishment of diverse crystalline phases. Glasses with lower contents of CeO₂showed no tendency to crystallization. The crystals of CeO₂ containing glasses were spheroid like morphology that was assigned to the three-dimensional fast growth of the well-formed structural species in the boro-apatite phase. In addition, the cerium free glass is characterized by particle-like morphology. Then the growth of spheroid species in three-dimension plays better compatibility and bioactivity behavior than that of the other types of morphology. This is may because the spherical shape has a higher surface area than that of the needle-like morphology. Accumulation and aggregation of small-sized spheres from cerium borate phases played the role of enhancing the hardness of the studied materials.

Cerium Borate, Glass Morphology, Crystalline State, Spheroid Species

ElBaz, N. , El-Damrawi, G. and Abdelghany, A. (2021) Structural Role of CeO₂ in the Modified Borate Glass-Ceramics. New Journal of Glass and Ceramics, 11, 34-43. doi: 10.4236/njgc.2021.111002.