Achieving outstanding physical and optical properties of borosulfophosphate glasses via controlled doping of rare earth ions is the key issue in the fabrication of new and highly-efficient glass material for diverse optical applications. Thus, the effect of replacing P2O5 by Dy2O3 on the physical and optical properties of Dy[Formula: see text]-doped lithium-borosulfophosphate glasses with chemical composition of 15Li2O–30B2O3–15SO3–[Formula: see text]P2O5–[Formula: see text]Dy2O3 (where 0.0 mol.% [Formula: see text] mol.%) has been investigated. The glass samples were synthesized from high-purity raw materials via convectional melt-quenching technique and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX), density and UV–vis–NIR absorption measurements. The amorphous nature of the prepared glass samples was confirmed by XRD patterns whereas the EDX spectrum depicts elemental traces of O, C, B, S, P and Dy. The physical parameters such as density, refractive index, molar volume, polaron radius and field strength were found to vary nonlinearly with increasing Dy2O3 concentration. UV–vis–NIR absorption spectra revealed seven absorption bands with most dominant peak at 1269 nm (6H[Formula: see text]F[Formula: see text]H[Formula: see text]). From the optical absorption spectra, the optical bandgap and Urbach’s energy have been determined and are related with the structural changes occurring in these glasses with increase in Dy2O3 content. Meanwhile, the bonding parameters ([Formula: see text]) evaluated from the optical absorption spectra were found to be ionic in nature. The superior features exhibited by the current glasses nominate them as potential candidate for nonlinear optical applications.

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Increasing demands for better perfoming glasses have lead to current investigating of the sturctural properties of glasses for optimum performances. Calcium sulphate borophosphate glasses of different compositions were prepared using melt quenching technique. The glass forming ability and stability were checked using Differential thermal analyzer (DTA). Density and molar volume had been evaluated and analyzed. From the results of XRD, the absent of discrete and continuous sharp peaks confirmed the amorphous nature of the glass compositions while the results from both IR and Raman revealed the existence of SO4, BO4, BO3, P-O-P and PO43-. Addition of CaSO4 to borophosphate influenced the conversion of the dominant BO3 groups to BO4 groups. The structure of the samples was mainly based on metaphosphate, diphosphate and BO4 units, which became depolymerized with addition of CaSO4 content. The glass forming ability and thermal stability were found to increase with an increase in the concentration of modifier content. Glass density and molar volume is found to be between 2.146 to 2.314 gcm-3 and 45.794 to 48.880 m3mol-1 respectively. It is observed that the density of glass increased while the molar volume also increased with respect to increase in concentration of CaSO4 in the glass compositions. We analysed our data using different mechanisms and compared the results with previous works. Our findings show that this glass could be beneficial and considered as a good candidate for optical devices applications.

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