Electrical and Structural Characteristic of Copper Oxide (I) Containing Lithium Phosphate Glasses

Oxide glasses containing transition metal ions are of enhanced interest because of their applications in information storage, electrical and optical switching devices. The aim of the present work is to design, fabricate and characterize semiconducting glasses containing copper oxide. In such glasses copper is expected to provide mixed conduction with contributions from copper ions as well as from polarons to ionic and electronic conductivity, respectively. Different compositions belonging to the (50-x)Li 2O-xCu 2O-50P 2O 5 (0<x<20 mol%) system were synthesized by melt quench method. The P 2O 5 mol% was kept constant at 50 mol% while the effect of both Cu 2O and Li 2O on the electrical properties of the glass material was investigated considering the progressive substitution of the mol% Cu 2O by Li 2O. Varying the mole percentage of copper oxide in lithium cuprous phosphate (Li 2O-Cu 2O-P 2O 5) system, we are assessing these relative contributions to overall conduction process.