Search Results (818)

Heavy metal fluoride glasses (HMFGs), particularly fluorozirconate glass systems such as ZBLAN have attracted considerable attention due to their unique physical properties, including low phonon energies, wide transparency from the UV to the mid-IR, and high rare-earth ion doping solubility, making them promising materials for photonic applications. This review provides an overview of fluoride glass synthesis methods, structural characteristics, and physical properties of fluorozirconate glasses, with emphasis on glass processing conditions, thermal, mechanical, and optical properties. The structural characteristics are discussed in terms of zirconium–fluorine polyhedral networks and their compositional dependence, while physical properties are analyzed, including glass transition behavior, crystallization tendency, elastic moduli, and infrared transmission. Rare-earth doped Er³⁺, Ho³⁺, and Tm³⁺ ZBLAN glasses are also discussed, which exhibit efficient emissions in the near and mid-IR spectral regions. Although significant progress has been achieved, limitations related to thermal stability, mechanical strength, and incomplete understanding of structure–property relationships persist. Future research should therefore focus on compositional optimization and predictive structural modeling to enable the design of improved fluoride glasses for various applications. Full article

Glass-ceramics are inorganic, non-metallic materials obtained by controlled crystallization of glasses through different processing routes; they contain at least one functional crystalline phase together with a residual glass, and the crystallized fraction may range from trace levels to nearly complete crystallization. Transparent glass-ceramics (TGCs) constitute the optically transparent subset of this class and combine a controlled crystalline microstructure with a residual amorphous matrix. Their transparency distinguishes them from conventional opaque glass-ceramics and is achieved by minimizing light scattering through careful control of crystallite size, volume fraction, spatial distribution, and refractive-index mismatch between the crystalline and glassy phases. Unlike conventional sintered ceramics, TGCs retain many of the processing advantages of glass while incorporating crystalline phases that can enhance mechanical, thermal, optical, or functional properties. Depending on their composition and microstructure, TGCs may exhibit improved hardness, fracture toughness, thermal stability, chemical durability, luminescence, nonlinear optical response, or ion-exchange strengthening capability. These features make TGCs attractive for applications requiring both optical clarity and advanced performance, including protective cover glass, transparent armour, precision optical substrates, laser and photonic components, optical sensors, and multifunctional host materials for rare-earth ions and nanoparticles. Full article

Yb³⁺-containing glasses and glass-ceramics are attractive photonic materials because Yb³⁺ can act simultaneously as a near-infrared absorber, an energy-transfer sensitizer, a luminescent center, and a composition-dependent modifier of glass structure and crystallization. This brief review focuses on crystallization from parent glasses to glass-ceramics and examines glass-network chemistry, local Yb³⁺ coordination, phase separation, viscosity, heating rate, treatment temperature, holding time control nucleation, crystal growth, phase selection, rare-earth partitioning, transparency, and optical performance. Representative oxyfluoride, phosphate, oxyapatite, borosilicate, and aluminosilicate systems are compared using thermal analysis, X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, vibrational spectroscopy, and optical spectroscopy. The available data show that Yb₂O₃ or YbF₃ does not have a universal effect on crystallization: low concentrations can promote fluoride-rich clustering or lower the apparent crystallization barrier, whereas higher concentrations can increase packing density, stabilize the residual glass, change the competitive phase assemblage, or suppress crystallization. Crystallization-enhanced luminescence is most consistently obtained when Yb³⁺ and the activator partition into low-phonon-energy nanocrystals while crystal size and refractive-index mismatch remain sufficiently small to preserve transparency. This review also identifies major reporting gaps, including limited quantification of crystalline fraction, partition coefficients, luminescence lifetime, quantum efficiency, and long-term thermal stability. Practical design guidelines and unresolved questions are proposed to support the rational development of transparent Yb³⁺-containing glass-ceramics for lasers, sensing, optical amplification, and related photonic applications. Full article

Low-emissivity (low-E) coatings are among the most effective thin-film technologies for reducing radiative heat losses and controlling solar heat gain in buildings, which account for approximately 30–40% of global primary energy consumption. This expanded review follows the technological evolution of low-E glazing from early transparent-conductor “heat mirrors” to modern multi-silver dielectric/metal/dielectric (D/M/D) architectures and emerging functional coatings. Four complementary perspectives are addressed: (i) the materials employed, from silver-based multilayers and transparent conducting oxides (ITO, FTO, AZO, GZO) to seed, blocker, and protective dielectric layers; (ii) the deposition systems, contrasting on-line pyrolytic/CVD “hard” coatings with off-line magnetron-sputtered “soft” coatings, together with ALD, sol–gel, and evaporation routes; (iii) the methods of analysis used to correlate microstructure, composition. and interfaces with optical, electrical, and thermal behaviour (XRD, XRR, SEM/TEM, AFM, XPS, SIMS, spectrophotometry, ellipsometry, emissivity, and U-value metrology according to EN 410/EN 673 and ISO 9050); and (iv) the functional performance of low-E stacks in insulating glass units, vacuum glazing, retrofit films, and smart-window systems across climate zones. Persistent research gaps are identified in long-term durability and ageing, indium-free scalable materials, standardized accelerated testing, and multi-objective design of thinner, more selective, and more robust stacks. Full article

This study explores the development of low-friction, water-based coatings tailored for industrial applications in pharmaceutical glass packaging. The study focuses on scalable deposition strategies to obtain durable low-friction coatings suitable for industrial implementation. To balance mechanical performance and application efficiency, two different application approaches based on a two-component coating (aminosilane primer and lubricant) were investigated. In the first case, the coating is deposited in two steps, while in the second, a single deposition step is used. Characterization through contact-angle measurements and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed successful deposition of the primer on the glass surface. Scratch resistance tests revealed an increase in the critical load for fracture initiation from 4.5 N for uncoated glass to 6.5 N for the best-performing coating, indicating improved resistance to surface damage. Friction performance was assessed via tribological tests, which demonstrated that the primer–lubricant coatings achieved the lowest coefficient of friction (approximately 0.2), compared with uncoated glass (stabilizing at approximately 0.3 after an initial value of 0.5) and lubricant-only coatings (approximately 0.4–0.5), confirming the beneficial role of the primer in the coating system. Representative profilometry measurements indicated sub-micrometric coating thicknesses, while UV–Vis measurements confirmed that the coatings preserved the high optical transparency of the glass substrate, with average visible transmittance values above 90%. Furthermore, the successful implementation of the coating using an automated spray system demonstrates its potential for scalable industrial production. These findings support the potential of environmentally sustainable water-based coatings for pharmaceutical glass packaging by combining improved mechanical performance with preserved optical transparency and compatibility with scalable spray deposition. Full article

In the present work, thin TiO₂ films were obtained by the sol–gel spin-coating method on glass and ITO-covered glass substrates. The crystallization evolution of the thin films was studied by the X-ray Diffraction (XRD) technique. The results indicate that the films’ crystalline structure was greatly affected by substrate type. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) revealed the chemical states of the TiO₂ films and proved the formation of TiO₂ on ITO substrates. Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) showed that the TiO₂ films deposited on the ITO glass possessed a uniform and homogeneous surface morphology. The influence of optical properties (transmittance, reflectance, and optical band gap) on substrate type, the number of layers and annealing temperatures was determined. Spectroscopic data confirmed high transparency of the TiO₂ films obtained on ITO substrates as the transmittance in the visible spectral range was close to 85%. The obtained results reveal that thin TiO₂ films on ITO substrates can be an excellent candidate for photovoltaic and optoelectronic applications. Full article

Traditional stone-slab dwellings in Southwest Henan possess distinctive regional characteristics and inherent climate adaptability. However, previous studies have mainly focused on individual aspects of indoor environmental performance, while integrated optimization of daylighting, thermal environment, and renewable energy utilization under the constraints of heritage conservation has received limited attention. This study systematically evaluates the indoor light and thermal environment of traditional stone-slab dwellings through field measurements and validated numerical simulations, and proposes appropriate optimization technologies. The numerical model was first validated against field measurement data and subsequently employed to evaluate the proposed optimization strategies. The results indicate that the daylight factor in the main occupied rooms does not satisfy current standard requirements. In terms of thermal performance, indoor temperatures are excessively high in summer and excessively low in winter, while the relative humidity remains close to saturation. Based on psychrometric chart analysis and the conservation requirements of traditional dwellings, a series of optimization strategies are proposed and validated. The results demonstrate that the addition of skylights, the application of 60 mm polyurethane (PUR) insulation boards to the roof and exterior walls, and the installation of transparent Low-E insulating glass units for exterior windows are effective technologies for improving the indoor light and thermal environment of stone-slab dwellings in Southwest Henan. The potential for solar energy utilization is also evaluated. This study provides an integrated framework for the environmental optimization of traditional stone dwellings and offers practical guidance for their sustainable conservation, performance enhancement, and renewable energy utilization. Full article

Flexible organic solar cells (FOSCs) are a promising green energy technology due to their mechanical flexibility, light weight, low cost, and compatibility with large-area solution processing. Although the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of rigid organic solar cells has exceeded 20%, a significant performance gap remains for flexible devices, primarily constrained by the limitations of two key components: the flexible substrate and the transparent electrode. This review systematically summarizes recent research progress on flexible substrates, including ultrathin glass, polymer substrates, stretchable substrates, and bio-based substrates, and flexible transparent electrodes, including ITO, conductive polymers, carbon-based nanomaterials, ultrathin metal films, metal grids, and metal nanowire networks. Building on this, the review explores strategies for the synergistic design of substrates and electrodes, analyzing critical pathways for their co-optimization across four dimensions: interface engineering, mechanical compatibility, optical coupling, and process integration. Examining representative case studies from the literature, optimal substrate–electrode pairings for different application scenarios are summarized. Finally, the review outlines a future perspective on the evolution from compatibility toward functional integration, offering a systematic framework for the development of next-generation flexible photovoltaic devices that are efficient, stable, and adaptable to diverse application requirements. Full article

Femtosecond laser writing (FLW) enables mask-free three-dimensional photonic integration in transparent materials and offers a flexible route for prototyping glass-based photonic circuits. Here, we present a monolithic fabrication approach that combines femtosecond laser waveguide writing, femtosecond laser-induced chemical etching (FLICE), laser ablation, and metallization to realize reconfigurable photonic circuits in borosilicate glass. The process is implemented in a CAD-to-device workflow that allows optical, mechanical, and electrical structures to be co-designed and fabricated within the same substrate. A stress-assisted waveguide-writing regime is developed in borosilicate glass, enabling single-scan fabrication of optical waveguides, directional couplers, and Mach–Zehnder interferometers at writing speeds of 30 mm/s. The fabricated devices demonstrate stable guiding, directional coupling, and interferometric operation, providing a practical basis for implementing reconfigurable photonic building blocks in this material platform. FLICE is then used to fabricate suspended glass microbridges incorporating femtosecond-laser-written waveguides and integrated resistive microheaters. These structures act as thermally isolated thermo-optic phase shifters and enable a full 2π phase shift with an electrical power consumption of approximately 17 mW. The results demonstrate the feasibility of combining FLW and FLICE within a single borosilicate glass substrate to monolithically integrate passive photonic circuits with actively tunable thermo-optic phase shifters. This work establishes a laser-based fabrication route for reconfigurable three-dimensional photonic circuits in glass and provides a basis for future optimization toward larger programmable photonic systems. Full article

Edge chamfering is a critical process in glass manufacturing because it suppresses crack propagation and improves both edge strength and operational safety. As such, it has become an essential step in modern glass production. However, in current automated production lines, chamfer quality inspection still relies heavily on manual visual inspection and contact-based measuring instruments, which are limited by low efficiency, strong subjectivity, and poor compatibility with production-line takt time. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a vision-based inspection method for transparent glass chamfers using corner analysis, and a dedicated glass chamfer inspection system is developed for experimental validation. First, machine-vision image processing is applied to enhance chamfer-region features and improve detection robustness. Candidate endpoint generation is then combined with the construction of an endpoint-screening coordinate system to achieve stable localization of chamfer endpoints. In addition, quadrant-based spatial constraints are introduced to further enhance endpoint localization stability, enabling automatic measurement of key geometric parameters, including chamfer length, width, and height. On this basis, multiple defect-discrimination criteria are established by integrating geometric tolerance violations with spatial abnormalities in endpoint distribution, thereby enabling automatic identification of chamfer defects. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a mean absolute measurement error of 0.087 mm and an average inspection time of 0.505 s per workpiece. The method can also effectively identify chamfer defects, demonstrating its suitability for online inspection while maintaining both dimensional measurement accuracy and defect detection capability. Full article

Improving motor efficiency by reducing frictional losses in the journal bearings used in many rotating machines is critical for advancing sustainable mechanical systems, especially automobiles. This study investigates the application of microbubbles, which are known to reduce frictional drag in fluids. The incorporation of microbubbles into lubricants offers an environmentally friendly friction-reduction method that avoids chemical additives. In this work, microbubbles were generated within lubricating oil and applied to a journal bearing. Experimental measurements of friction torque during shaft rotation demonstrated that lubricating oil containing microbubbles yielded lower torque than oil without microbubbles. These results indicate that microbubbles effectively reduce friction in journal bearings. Furthermore, a transparent quartz glass bearing and acrylic shaft were used to directly observe the dynamics of microbubbles flowing within the journal bearing clearance to elucidate the underlying frictional torque reduction mechanism. Full article

Net primary productivity (NPP) is a core diagnostic variable of terrestrial carbon cycling, yet consistent annual NPP simulation remains challenging in alpine heterogeneous regions where topography, hydrothermal gradients, vegetation structure, and nutrient constraints interact. Remote-sensing products such as MODIS provide valuable observational constraints, whereas light-use-efficiency models such as CASA retain process transparency and scenario transfer capability. This study develops a CASA-based, MODIS-constrained framework for annual NPP simulation over the Gannan Plateau. The framework preserves a locally parameterized CASA baseline and adds a geographically weighted regression (GWR) residual-alignment layer trained on CASA–MODIS residuals during 2005–2013. The fitted correction relationship was then applied to the 2014–2020 temporal transfer period and evaluated in a 2030s SSP scenario transfer experiment. MODIS was treated as the correction target rather than ground truth, and GLASS was adopted as an independent product-level benchmark. During 2014–2020, the GWR-corrected product showed improved pooled pixel-level agreement with the MODIS-constrained target relative to parameter-localized CASA, with R² increasing from 0.438 to 0.708 and RMSE decreasing from 91.4 to 68.7 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹. Residual Moran’s I also decreased, indicating weaker residual spatial organization after correction. Product-level comparison with GLASS showed a moderate, directionally consistent improvement relative to uncorrected CASA, although this comparison was not interpreted as ground-truth validation. The 2030s scenario transfer experiment indicated that the correction layer changed the spatial expression of NPP divergence among SSP pathways. Overall, the proposed framework provides a process-model-preserving and observation-constrained approach for improving agreement between annual NPP estimates and the MODIS-constrained target in alpine heterogeneous regions, while its applicability remains subject to product uncertainty, spatial dependence, and future nonstationarity. Full article

Smart waste systems can support sustainable recycling only when sensing, classification, and routing decisions are linked to transparent uncertainty management. This study aims to develop and evaluate a measurement-calibrated, risk-aware selective routing prototype for sustainable smart waste sorting under bench-scale conditions. The proposed prototype integrates an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensing layer, Arduino Nano control, ESP8266 wireless synchronization, calibration-based fill level conversion, median filtering, exponential smoothing, hysteresis, and persistence-driven alert logic with a conveyor-based single-item vision-routing layer. The sorting layer routes items into glass, metal, plastic, trash, or a reject stream using a reject-aware VGG19 classifier with true logit temperature scaling and calibrated confidence gating. A quantitative prototype-level experimental evaluation was conducted using a five class benchmark of 2527 TrashNet images under a stratified 75/10/15 hold-out design, with cardboard and paper serving as outlier-exposure samples for the reject class. The final model achieved 88.13% test accuracy, 88.15% weighted F1, and 96.60% reject class F1. With a final policy tau = 0.70, the system routed 76.09% of routing class test items with 92.66% routed precision, while reject recall reached 98.66% and reject false acceptance was limited to 1.34%. Structured perturbation testing showed that severe visual degradation reduced automatic routing coverage but mostly shifted uncertain cases toward rejection. The contribution of this work is a transparent prototype-level mechanism that links calibrated sensing, calibrated visual confidence, selective rejection, and actuation-aware routing to support recycling stream purity under bounded uncertainty. Future work should validate the approach under multi-bin, multi-object, and field deployment conditions. Full article

Transparent objects such as glass containers, test tubes, and plastic bottles are common in robotic manipulation scenarios, but their refractive and reflective surfaces produce incomplete RGB-D geometry and make task-specific grasp selection unreliable. This paper presents an integrated vision-language system for transparent object perception and task-oriented grasping. First, we construct VLM-DRE, a transparent object image instruction dataset with 12,700 images and 38,100 image-instruction-bounding-box triplets. LoRA fine-tuning of Molmo-7B improves target click accuracy from 86.4% to 91.5% and IoU@0.75 from 57.5% to 69.1%. Second, MSR-Net performs monocular depth completion and mask prediction using multi-scale adaptive feature fusion and progressive feature refinement, achieving RMSE 0.066, mAP 98.61%, and IoU 94.12% on Syn-TODD, and RMSE 0.118, mAP 99.02%, and IoU 87.95% on ClearPose. Third, LMF-Net combines RGB-D cross-modal fusion with learnable multi-factor matching to rank AnyGrasp 6-DoF candidates, reaching 77.8% Top-1 and 90.5% Top-3 accuracy on TaskGrasp-Image and improving PRISM-Real success from 61.1% to 68.5%. On a RealSense D435i–Unitree Z1 Pro platform, the complete system obtains 85.4% success with manual clicks and 71.3% with VLM-predicted clicks, supporting perception-to-grasping integration while highlighting target localisation and runtime as deployment bottlenecks. Full article

The development of transparent multifunctional coatings capable of combining optical properties with mechanical durability remains a significant challenge in advanced materials engineering. In this study, novel hybrid coatings based on a poly(vinyl butyral)/epoxy resin (PVB/epoxy) matrix reinforced with tungsten disulfide (WS₂) nanostructures were developed and examined for potential application in camouflage protection of glass surfaces. Camouflage aims to reduce the detectability of an object by minimizing the optical contrast between the object and its surrounding environment. For transparent substrates such as glass, this objective is particularly demanding because the transparency must be preserved while reducing unwanted surface reflection and optical signatures over relevant spectral ranges. For this purpose, in this research two types of nanostructures were investigated: fullerene-like nanoparticles (IF-WS₂) and inorganic nanotubes (INT-WS₂). The coatings were fabricated via ultrasonically assisted solution dispersion followed by casting over the glass plates and Teflon molds, and solvent evaporation. Structural, thermal, optical, and mechanical properties were systematically evaluated using SEM, FTIR, DSC, UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopy, gloss measurements, hardness testing, and cavitation wear resistance analysis. The incorporation of WS₂ nanostructures led to improved mechanical performance, with increased hardness and enhanced resistance to cavitation-induced wear. Optical characterization showed moderate reductions in reflectance and controlled transmittance in the visible and near-infrared regions, while overall transparency was maintained. The results indicate that WS₂ nanostructures contribute to both light scattering and absorption, leading to reduced specular reflection and improved optical masking potential. The findings demonstrate that hybrid PVB/epoxy/WS₂ coatings offer a promising approach for designing transparent, mechanically resistant coatings with tunable optical properties, with potential applications in protective glass systems and advanced functional surfaces. Full article