[Image above] Credit: Jtfolden, Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
This penultimate month’s topic for the “Glass: Then and Now” series glass-ceramics.
Discovered by S.D. Stookey in 1953,glass-ceramics comprise a noteworthy class of materials prepared by controlled crystallization of inorganic nonmetallic glasses. They contain at least one type of functional crystalline phase and residual glass.
The introduction to this month’s topic comes from Edgar D. Zanotto, professor of materials science and engineering at the Federal University of São Carlos and director of CeRTEV (Center for Research, Technology and Education in Vitreous Materials). He has filed more than 27 patents and published more than 300 original and review papers, including more than 15 articles on glass-ceramics in ACerS publications. We thank Zanotto for his contributions to this important and useful area of study and development.
“Glass-ceramics deliver unusual property combinations, such as extremely low thermal expansion coefficient, optical transparency or translucency, high hardness, fracture strength and toughness, high or low electrical conductivity, bioactive behavior, chemical durability, and aesthetics. This wide range of valuable properties makes glass-ceramics perfect materials for sophisticated domestic and high-tech applications, such as transparent cooking ware, cooktop plates, telescope mirrors, cell phone screens, hard disk substrates, dental prostheses, nuclear waste disposal hosts, and artificial stones for architecture.
From a scientific perspective, glass-ceramics are ideal materials for controlling and studying nano- or microstructure–property relationships. Glass-ceramics indeed have a glorious past and a bright future!”
– Edgar Zanotto, Federal University of São Carlos
Articles for Glass-ceramics