Structural Study of Glass and Glass Ceramics Prepared with Egyptian Basalt

Egyptian basalt rock was used to prepare some glasses with different additives of Na 2 O by the melt quenching method. The prepared glasses were characterized applying FTIR, XRD and Mössbauer Effect (ME) spectroscopy. XRD indicated that all the samples showed a homogeneous glassy phase except the sample containing 35 mol % of Na 2 O which showed a very small crystalline phase of less than 5 %. FTIR measurements indicated the presence of various structural units including SiO 4, FeO 4 and AlO 4 . ME hyperfine parameters indicated the presence of both Fe 2+ and Fe 3+ in the low Na 2 O content glasses (the first three samples), while the iron in the high Na 2 O content glasses (the last three samples) showed only the Fe 3+ state. All the glass samples were heated at 900 ° 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.