Abstract
Lead vanadate glasses of the system xMoO
3
-50V
2
O
5
-(50-x)PbO (0 ≤ x ≤ 25 mol. %) were synthesized and studied by FTIR and ultrasonic spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry to investigate the role of MoO
3
content on their atomic structure. The elastic properties and Debye temperatures of the glasses were investigated using sound velocity measurements at 4 MHz. The activation energy for the glass transition was derived from the dependence of the glass-transition temperature (T
g
) on the heating rate. Similarly, the activation energy of the crystallization process was also determined. According to the IR analysis, the vibrations of the vanadate structural units are shifted towards higher wavenumbers on the formation of bridging oxygens. The change of density and molar volume with MoO
3
content reveals that the molybdinate units are less dense than the lead oxide units. The observed compositional dependence of the elastic moduli is interpreted in terms of the effect of MoO
3
on the coordination number of the vanadate units. A good correlation was observed between the experimentally determined elastic moduli and those computed according to the Makishima-Mackenzie model. It is assumed that MoO
3
plays the role of a glass former by increasing the activation energy for the glass transition and the activation energy for crystallization and by increasing both the thermal stability and the glass formation range of the vanadate glasses.