Compositional, temperature, and pressure controls on structural order, dynamics, and properties of multicomponent borosilicate glasses

硼硅酸盐玻璃广泛应用于技术领域，从耐热和耐化学腐蚀的玻璃器皿和反应容器，到“玻璃纤维”中的增强纤维，再到计算机、电视和智能手机显示屏以及太阳能电池基板。其中许多是数十亿美元的美国产业的核心。这些材料的原子级结构控制着它们的性能，必须对其进行定制，以提高它们在各种用途中的性能。该项目旨在了解玻璃成分的变化，制造过程中热处理的方式以及弯曲和破裂过程中可能发生的压力如何改变玻璃结构的一般原理，以使所需的性能更容易预测和设计。这些研究的结果也应该在玻璃（以及冷却时形成玻璃的液体）很重要的其他科学领域，包括地球科学和凝聚态物理学，引起更广泛的兴趣。教育是这个项目的核心，因为大部分的研究将作为研究生和本科生的科学和工程职业培训的一部分进行。技术装备在这个项目中，教授和他的学生正在合成几个系列的玻璃，其成分有系统的变化，然后测量玻璃结构如何变化。正在使用的最重要的实验方法是固态核磁共振（NMR）光谱，它提供了有关技术玻璃中常见的许多成分（包括硼，铝，硅和氧）结构的定量细节。通过改变玻璃的热和压力处理，他们可以寻找重要的，但仍然知之甚少的效果。他们正在分析他们的研究结果与基于化学反应平衡，以促进预测的性质。具有异常小和/或高电荷阳离子的“非传统”组分的影响正在得到强调。目前改进和新型玻璃材料的大部分开发都来自试错实验;因此，重要的目标是对结构-性能关系进行更基本的理解，以有效地探索参数空间。这一目标的成功可能会导致更有效的方式来思考设计用于新的或特定应用的玻璃组合物。考虑到其他国家在玻璃科学方面的重大努力，以及制造高科技玻璃在美国工业中的重要性，美国研究人员似乎特别迫切需要在对这些材料的更基本理解方面取得进展，并保持这一领域的领导地位。

NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTIONBorosilicate glasses are widely used in technology, with applications ranging from heat- and chemical-resistant glassware and reaction vessels, to reinforcement fibers in 'fiber-glass', to computer, television and smart phone display screens and solar-cell substrates. Many of these are central to multi-billion dollar U.S. industries. The atomic-scale structure of these materials controls their properties, which must be tailored to improve performance in their diverse uses. This project seeks to understand general principles of how variations in the glass composition, the way that it is heat-treated during manufacturing, and the pressures that can occur during bending and cracking, change the glass structure, to allow desired properties to be more easily predicted and engineered. The results of these studies should have more general interest as well, in other fields of science where glasses (and the liquids that form glass on cooling) are important, including geosciences and condensed-matter physics. Education is central to this project, since most of the research will be undertaken as part of the training of graduate and undergraduate students on their ways to careers in science and engineering.TECHNICAL DETAILSIn this project, the professor and his students are synthesizing several series of glasses with systematic variations in composition, and then measuring how the glass structure changes. The most important experimental approach that is being used is solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, which provides quantitative details about the structure around many of the components common in technological glasses, including boron, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen. By varying the thermal and pressure treatments of the glasses, they can look for important, but still poorly-understood, effects. They are analyzing their findings with thermodynamic-based reaction equilibria to facilitate prediction of properties. Effects of 'non-traditional' components with unusually small and/or highly charged cations are being emphasized. Much of the current development of improved and new types of glass materials comes from trial-and-error experimentation; thus, it is an important goal to develop more fundamental understanding of structure-property relationships to efficiently explore parameter spaces. Success with this goal could lead to more effective ways of thinking about designing glass compositions for new or specific applications. Given the major efforts in glass science in other countries, and the importance of manufacturing high-tech glasses in U.S. industry, it seems particularly urgent for US-based researchers to make progress in the more fundamental understanding of these materials and remain as leaders in this field.