A team of researchers with The University of Tokyo and Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute has created a type of glass that is stronger than many metals.
Article continues below
In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers describe how they overcame one of the major hurdles in creating glass imbued with extra amounts of an oxide of aluminum, by using what they call aerodynamic levitation.
Glass that does not break when dropped or when struck by another object would be useful in a wide variety of applications, from automobile windows, to skyscrapers to smartphones and tablets. For that reason, scientists have been searching for ways to make traditional glass stronger.
One of those ways has been to add larger amounts of an oxide of aluminum to the mix, specifically, alumina, because it has one of the highest dissociation energies among oxides. Prior research has shown that glass made with such an addition would be much stronger than traditional glass.
Researchers have been prevented from creating such a glass, however, because of a problem in the production process—when more alumina is added to the mix while the glass is being made, silicon dioxide crystals develop where the mix meets the surface that is holding it, making the end product worthless as a glass. In this new effort, the researchers found a way around this problem—by removing the container from the process.
The new process involves causing the mix to be held in the air while it is forming, by pushing it from below with oxygen gas and then using a laser as a spatula to mix the materials together. The end result is a glass with more alumina in it than any other produced to date—a glass that the team reports is transparent, colorless and extremely hard. Testing showed it to be stronger than most metals, and almost as strong as steel.
The only thing holding up the production of shatter-proof smartphone screens using the new glass is that the team still needs to find a way to convert their method to a mass production process—they appear confident that such a way will be found, as they promise to find a way shortly. ■