Tailoring Structural and Optical Properties of Composite Glass with Rice Husk Fibre (RHF) as Additive Materials

This paper reports the effect of additional of rice husk fibre (RHF) with various sizes ranging from 63μm, 125μm and 250μm on the structural and optical properties of glasses. A series of glass with composition of 69.50TeO₂ – 20ZnO – 10Na₂O – 0.50Er₂O₃ – (x)0.2%RHF (x = 63μm, 125μm, 250μm) are synthesized by using melt-quenching technique. XRD pattern shows the nonexistence of sharp peak reflect the amorphous nature of glass without RHF content. However, an addition of RHF in glass matrix shows the appearance of sharp peaks signifies the contribution of cristobalite due to the incorporation of rice husk. SEM image of glass containing 125μm RHF illustrates the glass surface morphology. The respective EDX spectra of glass containing 125μm RHF verify the elemental traces of carbon, oxygen, sodium, zinc, tellurium, aluminium, silicon, copper, calcium and erbium. The variation in absorption coefficient of glass with additional of different sizes of RHF are observed due to the lowering value of α.