transparent ceramics

Crystallization of hybridized glasses provides a general and easy strategy for fabricating transparent ceramics

By Lisa McDonald / January 17, 2023

Current sintering methods used to obtain transparent ceramics face several challenges, including strict processing conditions and limited shape and size control. Researchers led by South China University of Technology presented a new general strategy for constructing dual-phase transparent ceramics from hybridized glasses that offers shape and size control as well as the potential for functionalization.

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Nascent explorations: Injection molding may offer path to high-throughput manufacturing of transparent ceramics

By Lisa McDonald / October 7, 2022

Fabricating transparent ceramics is inherently challenging due to the excellent mechanical, thermal, and chemical stability of ceramics. Researchers in Germany showed powder injection molding could allow for high-throughput manufacturing of complex-shaped transparent ceramics.

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Standard sintering aids and dispersants can degrade lasing performance of transparent ceramics

By Lisa McDonald / February 11, 2022

The use of transparent ceramics as a gain medium in lasers is an evolving field, and there is still much to learn about how processing parameters affect the ceramics’ performance. Researchers in Singapore and China published two papers investigating the possible effects of a standard sintering aid and dispersant on lasing performance.

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3D fabrication of transparent optical ceramics by lithography-based digital projection

By Lisa McDonald / November 23, 2021

To meet the industry’s growing demand for customized manufacturing, researchers are increasingly interested in processing transparent ceramics using additive manufacturing. Guangran Zhang and Yiquan Wu of Alfred University demonstrated how highly transparent yttrium aluminum garnet ceramics could be fabricated via a lithography-based digital projection method.

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Isolating a better option—ceramic Faraday rotators improve optical isolator performance

By Lisa McDonald / July 14, 2020

Optical isolators traditionally use single crystals to polarize light—could transparent ceramics be used instead? Researchers in Japan created high-performing transparent ceramics using lanthanide rare-earth oxides, materials previously believed to not be suited for optical applications.

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Light is the new heat—ultrafast heating system using photon energy

By Lisa McDonald / June 16, 2020

The idea of harnessing photons rather than electricity to produce heat has gained increasing attention in recent years. In a new research brief, ACerS Fellow Akio Ikesue and colleagues describe a photonic heating system based on transparent yttria alumina garnet ceramics.

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Transparent ceramic materials may make self-driving vehicles faster and safer

By Lisa McDonald / April 21, 2020

For self-driving vehicles to become a common reality, the laser surveying system LiDAR must be improved. Researchers from Alfred University developed a transparent ceramic that could prove to be an ideal lasing material for LiDAR.

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No pressure, no problem—researchers create transparent nanoceramics using pressureless crystallization

By Lisa McDonald / July 16, 2019

Transparent ceramics offer advantages over conventional glass and single-crystal technologies—could transparent nanoceramics be even more advantageous? Researchers show how pressureless glass crystallization could offer an easier way to synthesize transparent nanoceramics.

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Transparent ceramics: Stronger than Gorilla Glass

By Lisa McDonald / December 21, 2018

Jülich scientists created yttria-coated transparent zirconia ceramics that demonstrated fracture toughness values far higher than tempered glass. Their method is suitable for industrial mass production.

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High heat and pressure help researchers fabricate first samples of transparent silicon nitride

By April Gocha / March 23, 2017

By processing samples of silicon nitride under high pressure and heat, researchers at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron have converted an originally opaque hexagonal crystal structure into optically transparent cubic silicon nitride.

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