Special Issue "Glassy Materials: From Preparation to Application"

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Advanced and Functional Ceramics and Glasses".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2022.

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Giancarlo C. Righini
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
“Nello Carrara" Institute of Applied Physics (IFAC), National Research Council, Italy
Interests: glassy and nanostructured materials, integrated optics, optical microresonators, photonic devices
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

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

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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)

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

Article
Early-Stage Dissolution Kinetics of Silicate-Based Bioactive Glass under Dynamic Conditions: Critical Evaluation
Materials 2021, 14(12), 3384; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14123384 - 18 Jun 2021
Viewed by 389
Abstract
This manuscript presents a systematic and detailed study of ion release from 45S5 bioactive glass to develop a methodology to directly monitor dissolved ions in a simulated fluid via inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP OES). For the kinetic study, two dynamic [...] Read more.
This manuscript presents a systematic and detailed study of ion release from 45S5 bioactive glass to develop a methodology to directly monitor dissolved ions in a simulated fluid via inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP OES). For the kinetic study, two dynamic tests, an inline ICP test and a flow-through test, are performed with the same flow rate, temperature, pH, ionic strength of the solution, and sample surface to leaching solution volume ratio. The flow-through test allows for the measurement of an initial dissolution rate, as well the maximum amount of any species released from the surface of the glass. In addition, the data from the inline ICP test are obtained by immediate and direct monitoring of ions from the first minutes of contact of the glass with aqueous fluids with pH values of 4 and 7.4. The overall dissolution rates of the tested commercial bioactive glass in simulated body fluid (SBF) (pH 7.4) were significantly lower compared to the initial rate acquired. The methodology developed in this study can be applied to monitor the controlled release of ions with additional therapeutic functionalities, where the amount of ions released in the first minutes can be critical for the resulting biological performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Glassy Materials: From Preparation to Application)
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Article
Quantification of Carbonic Contamination of Fused Silica Surfaces at Different Stages of Classical Optics Manufacturing
Materials 2021, 14(7), 1620; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14071620 - 26 Mar 2021
Viewed by 374
Abstract
The chemical composition of ground and polished fused silica glass surfaces plays a decisive role in different applications of optics. In particular, a high level of carbon impurities is often undesirable for further processing and especially for gluing or cementing where adhesion failure [...] Read more.
The chemical composition of ground and polished fused silica glass surfaces plays a decisive role in different applications of optics. In particular, a high level of carbon impurities is often undesirable for further processing and especially for gluing or cementing where adhesion failure may be attributed to carbonic surface-adherent contaminants. In this study, the surface carbon content at different stages of classical optics manufacturing was thus investigated. Two different standard processes—grinding and lapping with two final polishing processes using both polyurethane and pitch pads—were considered. After each process step, the chemical composition and roughness of the surface were analysed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. An obvious correlation between surface roughness and effective surface area, respectively, and the proportion of carbon contamination was observed. The lowest carbon contamination was found in case of lapped and pitch polished surfaces. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Glassy Materials: From Preparation to Application)
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