November 9, 2012

A new way of making glass




A new way to make glass has been discovered by a collaboration of researchers at the Universities of Düsseldorf and Bristol using a method that controls how the atoms within a substance are arranged around each other. The research is published today in Physical Review Letters.

When cooling a liquid below its melting temperature it either crystallizes or transforms into a glass.  Glass is a peculiar state of matter: it has the mechanical properties of a solid but an amorphous structure like a liquid.


journal reference (abstract free): Physical Review Letters>>