Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Materials Today: Proceedings 5 (2018) 26199–26206 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings 2214-7853© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Proceedings of National Seminar on Physics and Chemistry of Non- Crystalline Materials. PCNCM2017 Alkaline earth lithium borate glasses doped with Fe (III) ions –an EPR and optical absorption study Ashok Bhogi a, * and P. Kistaiah b a VNR Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad- 500 090, Telangana, India. b Department of Physics, Osmania University, Hyderabad - 500 007, Telangana, India. Abstract A series of alkaline earth lithium borate (BLB) glasses by varying Fe 2 O 3 content have developed by the conventional melt quenching technique to enhance EPR and optical absorption studies, in the chemical composition of 15BaO-25Li 2 O-(60-x) B 2 O 3 -xFe 2 O 3 (x= 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1 mol %). The observed EPR spectra of Fe 3+ ion have resonances at g = 2.0032, 4.282 and 8.033. The number of spins participating in resonance (N) and its paramagnetic susceptibilities (χ) have also been evaluated. The optical absorption spectra exhibit a band at around 452 nm which is assigned to 6 A 1g (S) → 4E g (G) of Fe 3+ ions with distorted octahedral symmetry. From ultraviolet absorption edges, the optical band gap and Urbach energies have been evaluated. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Proceedings of National Seminar on Physics and Chemistry of Non- Crystalline Materials. Keywords: Lithium borate glasses; X-ray diffraction; Melt quenching; Optical absorption; Electron paramagnetic resonance. 1. Introduction Glass materials are more advantageous than crystalline materials because of their physical isotropy, absence of grain boundaries and compositional variations [1]. Among the various oxide glasses, borate ones have widely been investigated due to its open like structure. Addition of alkali ion such as Li 2 O to the borate glass composition * Corresponding author. Tel.: 09000765579. E-mail address: ashokbhogi@gmail.com