Birefringence of silica hydrogels prepared under high magnetic fields reinvestigated
Abstract
Birefringence is an indicator of structural anisotropy of materials. We measured the birefringence of Pb(II)-doped silica hydrogels prepared under a high magnetic field of various strengths. Because the silica is diamagnetic, one does not expect the structural anisotropy induced by a magnetic field. In previous work [Mori A, Kaito T, Furukawa H 2008 Mater. Lett. 62 3459-3461], we prepared samples in cylindrical cells made of borosilicate glass and obtained a preliminary result indicating a negative birefringence for samples prepared at 5T with the direction of the magnetic field being the optic axis. We have measured the birefringence of Pn(II)-doped silica hydrogels prepared in square cross-sectional cells made of quartz and reverted the previous conclusion. Interestingly, the magnetic-influenced silica hydrogels measured have been classified into four classes: two positive birefringent ones, no birefringent one, and negative birefringent one. Proportionality between birefringence and the strength of magnetic field is seen for the former two.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1409.4846,
title = {Birefringence of silica hydrogels prepared under high magnetic fields reinvestigated},
author = {Atsushi Mori and Takamasa Kaito and Hidemitsu Furukawa and Masafumi Yamato and Kohki Takahashi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.4846},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
15 pages, 4 figures; Materials Research Express, accepted