Functional glasses play a critical role in current and developing technologies. These materials have traditionally been designed empirically through trial-and-error experimentation. However, here we report recent advancements in the design of new glass compositions starting at the atomic level, which have become possible through an unprecedented level of understanding of glass physics and chemistry. For example, new damage-resistant glasses have been developed using models that predict both manufacturing-related attributes (e.g., viscosity, liquidus temperature, and refractory compatibility), as well as the relevant end-use properties of the glass (e.g., elastic moduli, compressive stress, and damage resistance). We demonstrate how this approach can be used to accelerate the design of new industrial glasses for use in various applications. Through a combination of models at different scales, from atomistic through empirical modeling, it is now possible to decode the “glassy genome” and efficiently design optimized glass compositions for production at an industrial scale.

Stretched exponential relaxation is a ubiquitous feature of homogeneous glasses. The stretched exponential decay function can be derived from the diffusion-trap model, which predicts certain critical values of the fractional stretching exponent, . In practical implementations of glass relaxation models, it is computationally convenient to represent the stretched exponential function as a Prony series of simple exponentials. Here, we perform a comprehensive mathematical analysis of the Prony series approximation of the stretched exponential relaxation, including optimized coefficients for certain critical values of . The fitting quality of the Prony series is analyzed as a function of the number of terms in the series.With a sufficient number of terms, the Prony series can accurately capture the time evolution of the stretched exponential function, including its "fat tail" at long times. However, it is unable to capture the divergence of the first-derivative of the stretched exponential function in the limit of zero time. We also present a frequency-domain analysis of the Prony series representation of the stretched exponential function and discuss its physical implications for the modeling of glass relaxation behavior.

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