Study of thermal behaviour of yttrium-aluminate glasses by DSC and high temperature XRD analysis

Yttrium-aluminate glasses with high alumina content are potential candidates for various applications ranging from transparent ballistic protections, through infrared transparent windows, to hosts for rare earth elements in materials used for solid state lasers. These glasses are interesting because of their optical and mechanical properties and high chemical and thermal stability. Preparation of bulk Al2O3-Y2O3 glasses is very time and energy consuming and prepared materials are very expensive. Different ways of mentioned bulk glasses preparation were reported, however the combination of flame synthesis and subsequent HP sintering of glass microspheres published by Rosenflanz seems to be very promising from technological and economic point of view. In this work the glass microspheres with different alumina content were prepared by flame synthesis. The morphology of prepared particles was studied by optical microscopy and SEM, XRD, DSC and high temperature XRD analysis were performed in order to determine of optimal conditions for hot-press sintering of glass microbeads