Structure and dynamics of Oxide Melts and Glasses : a view from multinuclear and high temperature NMR

TL;DR

This paper reviews how advanced solid-state NMR techniques reveal detailed local structures and dynamics in oxide glasses and melts, including molecular motifs and bridging oxygen, enhancing understanding of their complex chemistry.

Contribution

It introduces new NMR experiments that characterize polyatomic motifs and bridging oxygen in oxide glasses and melts, providing deeper structural insights.

Findings

Identification of phosphate groups up to three units long

Detection of μ3 oxygen bridges in aluminate glasses

Rediscussion of high-temperature melt structures

Abstract

Solid State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experiments allow characterizing the local structure and dynamics of oxide glasses and melts. Thanks to the development of new experiments, it now becomes possible to evidence not only the details of the coordination state of the network formers of glasses but also to characterize the nature of polyatomic molecular motifs extending over several chemical bonds. We present results involving 31P homonuclear experiments that allow description of groups of up to three phosphate units and 27Al/17O heteronuclear that allows evidencing μ3 oxygen bridges in aluminate glasses and rediscussion of the structure of high temperature melts.