Unusual Elastic and Mechanical Behaviors of Copper Phosphate Glasses with Different Copper Valence States

Elastic and mechanical properties such as Young's modulus E, Poisson's ratio ν, Debye temperature θ_D, Vickers hardness H_v, fracture toughness K_c, and fracture surface energies γ_f of yCuO_x·(100−y)P₂O₅ glasses (y= 45, 50, 55) with different copper valence states, i.e., R(Cu⁺) = Cu⁺/(Cu⁺+ Cu²⁺), at room temperature (humidity 64%) have been examined. The following features have been found: (1) the glass transition temperature (218–434°C), H_v (2.7–4.4 GPa), E (50.6–78.2 GPa), and θ_D (358–434 K) decrease largely with increasing R(Cu⁺); (2) the mean atomic volume, K_c (0.56–1.14 MPa·m^1/2), and γ_f (1.9–11.2 J·m⁻²) tend to increase with increasing R(Cu⁺); (3) 50CuO_x·50P₂O₅ glasses with R(Cu⁺) = 0.42 and 0.55 have a high resistance against crack formation in Vickers indentation tests and no crack is observed in the 45CuO_x·55P₂O₅ glass with R(Cu⁺) = 0.57 under an applied load of about 98 N. The results demonstrate that elastic and mechanical properties of yCuO_x·(100−y)P₂O₅ glasses depend strongly on the copper valence state and the CuO_x/P₂O₅ ratio. The unusal mechanical and elastic properties of copper phosphate glasses are well explained qualitatively by considering unique oxygen coordination and bonding states of Cu⁺ ions, i.e., lower coordination number and more covalent bonding compared with Cu²⁺ ions.