Development of UV transparent nanostructured sol–gel materials at low/moderate temperature and study of their physical properties

Sol–gel glass samples are prepared at 60 °C and are treated by various solvents as rinse and dip treatments. Comparative study of treated samples in various solvents is carried out by measuring Optical Transmission, Bulk Density, Mechanical Strength and Porosity. Nitrogen adsorption/desorption studies of these samples were performed at 77 K and shows that the size of the pores to be about 2.0 nm. Various instrumental techniques used for analysis are FTIR, XRD, SEM, and TGA-DTA. The untreated samples take long time to dry up and show moderate transmission in near UV and UV region which is much enhanced by rinse and dip treatments. The dipped glass samples using distilled water (DW) were found to have 36% porosity. Methanol (MeOH) dipped glass samples have good mechanical strength. From various physical properties these nanostructured glass samples can be useful as silica gel host matrices for solid state dye lasers and many other applications.