Nanostructure of glasses: experimental evidence

Inorganic glass is material having nanoscaled physical and chemical inhomogeneities ad initio because glass inherits thermodynamic fluctuations of concentration, density and anisotropy of a glass forming melt. Combining light scattering and high temperature acoustics data allows to use the effect of internal immersion for designing multicomponent glasses with Rayleigh scattering losses lower than those of the silica glass. Non-random spatial distribution of dopants including rare-earth (RE) ions in a glass host (doped ion segregation) causes excessive Rayleigh scattering losses and enhancement of RE ion-ion interaction. Therefore, it opens the way to optimize operation parameters of laser and up-converting glasses by the proper choice of glass host composition. Results of Raman scattering spectra processing and characterization of electrooptical (EO) sensitivity of niobate glasses showed the existence of groups with stoichiometry of the well-known EO crystals and crystal-like orderliness (crystal motifs) in the glasses as the necessary condition of high EO sensitivity. It was found that EO sensitivity of glasses could be essentially increased by thermal treatment.