DETERMINATION OF THE WATER-CONTENT OF ALKALI LIME SILICA GLASSES BY IR SPECTROSCOPY USING NUCLEAR-REACTION ANALYSIS FOR CALIBRATION

Systematic IR and NRA investigations were performed for two series of glasses with very different water contents. The glasses had the compos ition (in mol%): 16 R2O . 10 CaO . 74 SiO2 (R = sodium, potassium). Th e IR absorption coefficients of the OH bands were found to be linearly correlated with the total hydrogen content obtained by the NRA measur ements. Using the hydrogen concentration values from NRA, the total wa ter contents were calculated and so-called practical IR extinction coe fficients were deduced. The values found for the soda-lime-silica glas ses are 381.mol(-1).cm(-1) for the band at 3550 cm(-1) and 561.mol(-1) .cm(-1) for the band at 2800 cm(-1). The values for the potassium-lime -silica glasses are 231.mol(-1).cm(-1) for the band at 3550 cm(-1) and 781.mol(-1).cm(-1) for the band at 2800 cm(-1). Also, Scholze's two-b and method was applied, resulting in good agreement between the water contents of the glasses derived from the IR and the NRA measurements.