Structural Investigations of Complex Glasses by Solid-state NMR

This PhD thesis presents structural investigations of amorphous inorganic materials: oxide and oxynitride glasses and mesoporous bioactive glasses (MBGs), by solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). Lanthanum oxide and oxynitride [La-Si-(Al)-O-(N)] glasses have a large number of potential applications due to their physical properties. In our work we have studied, compared to previous investigations, significantly expanded ranges of glass compositions (for oxynitride glasses, including samples of very high nitrogen content, up to 53 % out of the anions). We have estimated local environments of 29Si and 27Al structural units (their coordination, polymerization degree and number of N incorporated into tetrahedral units) in the materials. We have suggested a random Al/Si distribution along with almost uniform non-bridging oxygen atoms distribution in aluminosilicate glasses. Silicon nitride was used as precursor in the oxynitride glass synthesis. We studied both α- and β-modifications of silicon nitride, 15N-enriched, as well as fully (29Si, 15N)-enriched samples. We have shown that the linewidths of 15N NMR spectra are dominated by J(29Si-15N) coupling in 29Si315N4 sample. Mesoporous bioactive glasses in the CaO-SiO2-P2O5 system show superior bioactivity (the ability to form a hydroxycarbonate apatite layer on the glass surface when exposed to body fluids) compared to conventional bioactive glasses due to their large surface area and uniform pore-size distribution. Previous studies suggested a homogeneous cation distribution over the MBG samples on a 10−20 nm length-scale. From our results, on the other hand, we may conclude that Si and P is not intimately mixed. We propose a structural model, in which the pore walls of MBGs are composed of a silica network, and a phosphate phase is present as nanometer-sized clusters that are dispersed on the pore wall