Glass crystallize into ceramic material

Other Aluminosilicates, Transparent mullite glass-ceramics can be produced from modified binary Al C —Si02 glasses (21). In these materials, the bulk glass phase separates into tiny alumina-rich droplets in a siliceous matrix. Further heat treatment causes these droplets to crystallize to mullite spherulites less than 0.1 Jim in size. When doped with ions such as Cr3+, transparent mullite glass-ceramics can be made to absorb broadly in the visible while fluorescing in the near-ii (22,23), thereby making them potentially useful for luminescent solar collectors. 

The TCE of most ceramics is isotropic, although for certain crystalline or single-crystal ceramics, the TCE may be anisotropic, and some may even contract in one direction and expand in the other. Ceramics used for substrates do not generally fall into this category, as most are mixed with glasses in the preparation stage and do not exhibit anisotropic properties as a result. The temperature coefficient of expansion of several ceramic materials is shown in Table 4.5. This parameter is linear over the temperature range of interest. 

The importance of transparent glass-ceramics doped by Cr as potential new materials for luminescent solar concentrators and tunable lasers is considerable It has been shown that Cr(III) exhibits exceptionally high quantum efficiency of luminescence in these materials as compared to glasses of the same compositions . Cr is also used as a probe for nucleation of and crystallization of cordierite into glass-ceramics . ... 

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