A MOLECULAR DYNAMICS STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF CHEMICAL REDUCTION ON THE STRUCTURE OF AMORPHOUSE GERMANIA

Abstract

The contribution is dedicated to the molecular dynamics (MD) study of the structure of reduced germania glass of composition 1Ge 1GeO2. The work is inspired by a recent report on the formation of Ge clusters in hydrogen reduced germanate glasses containing oxides of heavy metals. The MD simulations have been performed in the microcanonical (NVE) ensemble, using a simple two-body Born-Mayer-Huggins interaction potential. A tendency of germanium atoms to agglomeration into clusters, observed in the present calculations, is compared with an analogous tendency of Bi and Pb atoms, observed previously in the xBi (1-x)GeO2 and xPb (1-x)GeO2 systems. The differences in the short and medium-range order in GeO2 system between the 1Ge 1GeO2 and GeO2 glasses are discussed.

Keywords

• oxide glasses
• hydrogen reduction
• molecular dynamics
• structural modelling