Tellurite And Fluorotellurite Glasses For Active And Passive

3. Glass batching and melting; MDO 66
3. Glass batching and melting
3.1. Glass compositions used in this study
A wide range of oxide and oxyfluoride tellurite glass compositions was synthesised
and characterised in this study to choose suitable core / cladding compositions for
fibre drawing. Table (3.1) shows the oxide compositions melted and table (3.2) shows
the fluorotellurite compositions (bulk samples for characterisation and fibreoptic
preforms).
3.2. Glass batching
Glass properties are in general strongly dependent on composition so it is important to
be able to predict final glass compositions as accurately as possible before melting.
Due to volatilisation during glass melting, especially of fluoride compounds, there
will have been some degree of error in the batch calculation, but with carefully
controlled melting conditions these errors could be minimised. Table (3.3) shows the
chemicals used to batch glasses in this study. Further purification of the batch is
described later in section (3.4).
Batch calculations were performed using a program developed in house by Dr. D.
Furniss, called Batch. Fig. (3.1) shows the input window of this programme.