PROGRAM FOR CREATIVE SYNTHESIS IN GLASS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:  “High Efficiency research and technology transfer”

In the past 35 years I have edited a book and written an editorial associated with that book, and authored or co-authored a number of review papers that have one thing in common:  they stress the fact that very often glass research has been in the forefront of new and interesting discoveries.  Very often however, for a variety of reasons, these discoveries were not followed up on, nor capitalized on.  Over the years, glass scientists have done pioneering work in many areas: viscoelasticity, glass transition behavior, brittle fracture, indentation hardness, fast ion conduction, electronic and nuclear resonance in random materials, etc.  Despite these initial efforts, very often no complete understanding has emerged.  In addition, research in these areas may be restarted at some later time, at times by glass scientists/engineers, but more often by workers in other disciplines.  Much of the first work may be repeated with little or no additional understanding.  New technologies (e.g., packaging, optical fibers) are now emerging in which such understanding is either critical or useful for rapid progress.  Quite often, even though progress is made in these technologies, complete understanding of the basic problems is not accomplished.  It is suggested here that three basic steps be taken to alleviate this problem:

1.      Publication of “Classics in Glass Science and Technology”.  This will be modeled after “Classics in Metallurgy”………….

2.      From a study of (1), develop a list areas of  interesting/critical studies

3.      Organize ‘study groups’ to ‘attack’ these problems.  These study groups will be composed of a small number (6?) of EXPERTS in their field.  These experts will convene for several days to agree on the problem and the approach to be taken for its solution.  Individuals will be ‘assigned’ to organize portions of the experimental/theoretical approach. Necessary funds, etc. will be arranged for and the project will go forward to its solution or at least to the next step.

REFERENCES

1.  "Some Materials Problems in the Design of Glass Fiber Optical Waveguides," C.

R. Kurkjian and G. E. Peterson, in 2nd Cairo Solid State Conference, Plenum Press (1974).

2.  Strength of Inorganic Glass, ed. C. R. Kurkjian, Plenum Press (1985).

3. "Summary, Conclusions, Reflections," C. R. Kurkjian, in Strength of Inorganic

Glass, ed. C. R. Kurkjian, Plenum (1985).

4.  "From Griffith Flaws to Perfect Fibers, A History of Glass Research," C. R. Kurkjian

J. Non Cryst. Solids, 73, 265 (1985).

5.  "The Physics and Chemistry of Glass (Glass Science: A Personal View)," C. R.

Kurkjian, J. Non-Cryst. Solids, 84, 1 (1986).

6.  “Perspectives on the History of Glass Composition”, C.R. Kurkjian and W.R. Prindle,

            J.Am.Ceram.Soc., 81, 795-813 (1998).

7.  “Science and Technology of Silica Lightguides for Telecommunications”, C.R.

 Kurkjian and D.M. Krol, in Structure and Imperfections in Amophous and

Crystalline Silicon Dioxide, ed. R.A. B. Devine, J.-P Duraud and E. Dooryhee,

449-474, John Wiley and sons, Ltd, (2000).

8.  “Mechanical strength of glasses – studies then and now”, C.R. Kurkjian, The Glass

Researcher, 11 (2) 1-6 (1) (2002).

9.  “Use of early maps to guide us along the road to a stronger glass of the future”, C.R.

            Kurkjian and W.R. Prindle, ICC 2006.

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SAMPLE BANK/DATA BASE OF GLASSFORMER GLASSES

The idea for the creation of a standard glass collection, and/or a glass properties data base have been around for a long time.  The National Bureau of Standards (NIST) has both.  More recently with the advent of the use of computers for data collection/analysis two glass data bases have been developed: Interglad and SciGlas (see below).  While all of these are important and useful; they fail to address the following important issue. This occurred to me during my optical fiber work at Bell Labs and Bellcore (Telcordia). The idea is that especially in the case of high silica lightguide compositions, some interesting and perhaps potentially useful (often high silica glasses), are very difficult to prepare. In the case of high silica glasses, such glasses were prepared to investigate their usefulness as optical lightguides.  In many cases, such glasses may not be made again for many years.  This then is a call for people who have  such glasses to publicize the fact (e.g., on my website: http://glass-fracture.org/default.aspx or elsewhere) along with any information/ data they have on the glasses and to share them with others who could make any other measurements of interest to them.  We would then develop a data bank of these data.  While this has been titled a GF data base, it is generally interesting. The reason for the GF title is that especially high silica glasses are very difficult to prepare.

For those generally interested, below are some sites which give information about both glasses and data.

A general description of glass databases:

http://www.reference.com/browse/Glass+databases?jss=1

NIST

 Glass properties  http://www.ceramics.nist.gov/srd/summary/glsmain.htm

Standard glasses             https://www-s.nist.gov/srmors/detail.cfm

Interglad:

 http://www.newglass.jp/interglad_6/gaiyo/info_e.html

SciGlas:   

 http://www.sciglass.info/