Abstract
A special glass system of the chemical composition (55 − x) B
2
O
3
–15Bi
2
O
3
–15SiO
2
–15TeO
2
–x CeO
2
, (x = 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 mol%), was prepared by melting-annealing technique. XRD investigation was employed to identify the microstructure and confirmed the amorphous structure of these glasses. From the FTIR analysis, it can be assumed that CeO
2
possesses a glass conditional former property. It is also assumed that the transformation of BO
3
to BO
4
groups with increasing of the CeO
2
content caused a packing of the structure of the glass and increased its rigidity. This compactness of the structure increased the mechanical parameters such as density, ultrasonic velocity and elastic moduli. Also, both the glass transition temperature (T
g
) and the optical band gap (E
opt
.) show gradual increase in their values with increasing of CeO
2
.