Surface-initiated microstructure formation in glass ceramics

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Up to now, the mechanisms of surface nucleation and surface-induced texture formation are far from being understood. Corresponding phenomena are discussed hypothetically or even controversial, and related studies are restricted to very few glasses. As a main drawback, the vast majority of previous works on oriented growth of surface crystals do not consider the possible effects of glass surface treatments (like polishing defects, oradhered particles and cracks) or ambient annealing conditions (vacuum or atmospheric pressure), which both can influence crystal nucleation and growth. Moreover, very few observations of crystal orientation related to surface crystallization were focused on separately growing crystals. In conclusion, up to now, no systematic studies on initially oriented crystal growth or nucleation from defined active nucleation sites have been pursued.Therefore, the main objective of the proposed project is to gain a basic understanding of the mechanisms of surface-induced microstructure formation in glass ceramics. We shall answer the question whether preferred orientation of surface crystals is the result of oriented nucleation, or caused by other orientation selection mechanisms acting during early crystal growth. In both cases, crystal orientation may be caused by the orientation of the glass surface itself or the anisotropy and orientation of active surface nucleation defects. New techniques of experimental characterization of surface-crystallized glasses shall be applied to find answers to the questions posed above. Based on a controlled preparation and annealing of the glass sample surfaces, that includes the defined creation of active nucleation defects, and followed by the microstructural characterization especially during the very early growth stages of separated surface crystals, the orientation relations between defect and initiated surface crystal will be analyzed. In order to gain new insights, a couple of entirely new microstructure diagnostics techniques, including chemically contrasted XRM, laser-based sample preparation for XRM, and 3D electron backscatter diffraction shall be developed or applied.This way, using X-ray microscopy as a pivotal technique for the non-destructive 3D characterization of relatively large samples at superior spatial resolution (but also complemented by other microstructure diagnostics techniques, e.g. transmission electron microscopy based elemental mappings at cross-sectioned samples), unprecedented insights into the microstructure evolution upon surface crystallization of model glasses will be gained.