Abstract
Egyptian basalt rock was used to prepare some glasses with different additives of Na2O by the melt quenching method. The prepared glasses were characterized applying FTIR, XRD and Mossbauer Effect (ME) spectroscopy. XRD indicated that all the samples showed a homogeneous glassy phase except the sample containing 35 mol % of Na2O which showed a very small crystalline phase of less than 5 %. FTIR measurements indicated the presence of various structural units including SiO4, FeO4 and AlO4. ME hyperfine parameters indicated the presence of both Fe2+ and Fe3+ in the low Na2O content glasses (the first three samples), while the iron in the high Na2O content glasses (the last three samples) showed only the Fe3+ state. All the glass samples were heated at 900 degrees C for 6 h, of which XRD analysis showed different crystallites of nanometer size. ME spectra of the heat-treated (HT) samples indicated the presence of magnesium ferrites as confirmed by XRD study.