Strong and Tough Glass with Self‐Dispersed Nanoparticles via Solidification

Abstract

Glassy materials can be broadly defined as any amorphous solid, which are important in nature and have significant societal value for their applications in daily life and industry. Although many methods have been applied, the fracture toughness of traditional glasses is still very low due to intrinsic brittleness, significantly limiting their use for structural applications. While nanoelements may be added into glasses and ceramics to form nanocomposites with enhanced properties, it is extremely difficult to distribute and disperse them inside the liquid glass/ceramic matrix with traditional processing methods. It is shown that a strong and tough glass can be fabricated through a direct‐solidification process using a nanoparticle self‐dispersion mechanism in a glass melt (2MgO·2Al2O3·5SiO2) with the assistance of B2O3, delivering a 6.1% strain limit and strength up to E/14 (E is elastic modulus), which is close to the theoretical limit of E/10 and one of the highest among all materials reported so far. The fracture toughness of the glass with 30 vol% SiC nanoparticles is significantly higher than any other inorganic glass tested under similar conditions. This new method opens up remarkable opportunities for glass and ceramic research, manufacturing, and applications.

Achieving ultrahigh crack resistance in glass through humid aging

“…In addition to adding extra cost, these methods are also limited to either relatively thick glasses (thermal tempering) or mobile ion-containing glasses (chemical strengthening). Alternatively, recent work has shown some promise in toughening oxide glasses by incorporating crystalline or glassy nanoparticles in the glass, but these treatments either require high pressure (and thus limits the sample size) or lead to a loss of transparency [9,10].…”

Strong and Tough Alumina Ceramic from the Particle‐Stabilized Foam

“…According to the crack propagation behavior and fracture mechanism of alumina ceramics, it can be known that the key to overcoming the brittleness is to effectively reduce the crack source and reasonably control the crack propagation speed. [27][28][29][30] The ability of ceramics to resist crack propagation is improved and stress concentration at the crack tip is avoided. [31,32] In addition, the purpose of strengthening and toughening can also be achieved by introducing the second phase such as whiskers, fibers, or plate-like grains into the alumina matrix.…”

Unconventional Electromagnetic Response of Strongly Coupled Nanoparticles in the Thermal Infrared Region: Link with Effective Medium Properties and Incoherent Fields

“…But over the last decades, the development of innovative nanofabrication processes and characterization techniques has revitalized this fundamental subject by supplying it with new insights. Currently, nanoparticles are a key component of multiple technology and industry sectors, in particular in the realm of energy, [ 1,2 ] imaging, [ 3 ] sensing, [ 4 ] lasing, [ 5 ] communication, [ 6 ] biophysics, [ 7 ] glass manufacturing, [ 8 ] etc.…”