Glassy Materials: From Preparation to Application
This special issue belongs to the section "Advanced and Functional Ceramics and Glasses".
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Glassy materials are ubiquitous in the scientific field and in everyday life. Their enormous importance is also testified by the fact that the General Assembly of the United Nations has declared 2022 as International Year of Glass. This group of materials not only includes conventional glasses, but other structures as well in a broad range of solids including many polymers, metallic glasses, “soft” colloidal glasses, and granular media. Each of these is characterized by a glass-transition temperature or by a behavior very similar to the glass-forming process.
Despite the many works and the many results achieved, the physics of glasses and disordered solids remains one of the puzzling fields in today’s condensed-matter physics and chemistry. I firmly believe that the physics of glassy materials is much more challenging than the physics of crystalline solids, and there is a strong interest in these materials with the aim of developing an accurate and comprehensive general theory of the amorphous state.
On the other hand, their practical importance is enormous in many engineering applications, from the construction industry to the packaging and container industry, to eyewear industry, and to photovoltaics, to end up with the most advanced frontiers of microelectronics and photonics. It is also possible to say that the internet era could not have taken its first steps without the development of glass optical fibers and glass optical components.
This Special Issue aims to present a collection of original and review papers which can shed light on the most significant results achieved with reference to both the basic properties of this class of material and their countless applications, in addition to highlighting the most recent advances and the future perspectives in the field. Special focus will be placed on glasses. Contributions concerning the synthesis and microfabrication processes of glassy materials are equally welcome.
It is therefore my pleasure to invite you to submit research articles and review papers on glassy materials, their design and fabrication processes, and their applications to this Special Issue. Full papers and short communications are both welcome.
Given your activity in this area, I would like, as the Guest Editor of this Special Issue, to invite you and your co-workers to submit an article to Materials. Original research articles, reviews, and short reports would all be welcome. I am sure that your contribution to this SI would be of great interest.
Take this opportunity to spread the information on your research activity in the frame of the 2022 International Year of Glass!
Dr. Giancarlo C. Righini
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- fundamental properties of glasses
- glassy polymers and other glassy materials
- soft colloidal glasses
- new ideas for understanding the glass transition
- structural characterization, mechanical and thermal properties
- optical properties
- oxide and non-oxide glasses
- glassy physics in biological systems (single molecules, networks)
- fabrication processes and characterization or testing tools
- direct writing of optical structures in glasses and polymers
- glass (polymer) optical components and systems
- glasses and polymers for microelectronics and photonics
- glass/polymer hybrid microdevices
- nanostructured glassy materials
- ultra-thin glasses
- applications of glassy materials in (construction industry, packaging and container industry, eyewear industry, biomedicine, optical communications, photovoltaics, sensing devices)
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Published Papers
Materials - ISSN 1996-1944