Investigation of Structural and Optical Properties of Graphene Oxide-Coated Neodymium Nanoparticles Doped Zinc-Tellurite Glass for Glass Fiber

Carbon-based materials such as graphene oxide are known as attractive candidate to improve the current optoelectronic and laser devices. In this work, neodymium nanoparticles doped zinc-tellurite glass coated with graphene oxide (GO) denoted as ZBTNd (NPs)-GO was prepared via low-cost melt-quenching method and simple spray coating method. The structural properties of the glass system had been carried out by using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and confirmed its amorphous structural arrangement with non-existence of crystalline structure. The TeO3 and BO3 structural units were found dominant in tellurite glass network as determined by Fourier transforms infrared spectrometer (FTIR). High number of oxygen functional groups and stacked of graphene layers on the glass surface were revealed by field scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and Raman spectroscopy. The optical band gap energy values were found to decrease in the range of 2.665–2.405 eV along with dopant concentration. In the meantime, the refractive index values were found more than n > 2.00 and fall in the range of 2.12 to 2.20. The electronic polarization was calculated by using Lorentz-Lorentz equation and found in the range of 6.516 to 7.211 Å 3 . Based on these results, the improvements on optical properties of tellurite glass have been made to be used in laser application.