New laser-engraving strategies for the manufacturing of toughened glass

玻璃因其优异的光学性能、硬度、耐久性和化学稳定性而被广泛应用。然而，它的应用范围仍然受到其主要缺点的限制：脆性。玻璃对缺陷和应力集中极其敏感，抗冲击和抗热冲击能力极低。我们的研究团队最近发现了一种新的、低成本的、受生物启发的制造方法，可以显著提高玻璃的韧性。在这种方法中，我们使用3D激光雕刻机在材料的主体内创建弱界面网络，以便将裂纹引导到使其传播变得更加困难的配置中。我们证明了这种方法可以在纯拉伸模式和I型破裂下将薄玻璃板的韧性“放大”数百倍。在这个项目中，我们将探索这一新的微体系结构概念，并对其他类型的配置产生生物灵感，例如基板上的厚玻璃、曲面玻璃或薄玻璃，受到弯曲应力、冲击、尖锐刺穿、热应力或上述组合的影响，这些都是玻璃在实际应用中所经历的典型负载：建筑和安全玻璃、高端玻璃容器和触摸屏。雕刻的网络将根据这些特定的加载条件进行量身定做，这将需要广泛的建模、探索、优化和测试。结构性能将得到提高，同时将雕刻图案对每个应用的光学质量的影响降至最低。三维激光雕刻是一种极具创新性和通用性的制造方法，可以在制造过程的任何阶段实施，包括在成品上。虽然目前加拿大没有玻璃制造商，但有许多公司从制造商那里购买玻璃来制造玻璃产品。我们将与其中三家玻璃制造公司密切合作，每家公司都在不同的工业部门运营。这项勘探工作还将进一步扩展到其他工业领域，以及其他脆性材料，如涂料和工程陶瓷。

Glass is used in countless applications because of its outstanding optical properties, hardness, durability and chemical stability. However, its range of application is still restricted by its main drawback: brittleness. Glass is extremely sensitive to defects and stress concentrations and its resistance to impact and thermal shock is extremely low. Our research team recently discovered a new, low-cost, bio-inspired manufacturing method to significantly increase the toughness of glass. In this method we create networks of weak interfaces within the bulk of the material using a 3D laser engraver, in order to channel cracks into configurations in which their propagation is rendered more difficult. We demonstrated that this approach can "amplify" the toughness of thin glass plates by several hundreds of times in pure tensile mode and mode I cracking. In this project we will explore this new concept of microarchitecture and bioinspiration to other type of configurations such as thick glass, curved glass or thin glass on substrate subjected to flexural stresses, impacts, sharp puncture, thermal stresses or to combinations of the above which are typical to the loads experienced by glass in actual applications: architectural and safety glasses, high-end glass containers and touch screens. The engraved network will be tailored to each of these specific loading conditions which will require extensive modeling, exploration, optimization, and testing. Structural performance will be increased while minimizing the effect of the engraved patterns on the optical quality for each of these applications. Three-dimensional laser engraving is a highly innovative and versatile manufacturing method which can be implemented at any stage in the manufacturing process, including on finished products. While there are currently no fabricators of glass in Canada, there are many companies that purchase glass from fabricators to manufacture glass products. We will work in close collaboration with three of these glass manufacturing companies, each operating in different industrial sectors. This exploration work will also enable further expansions to other industrial domains, and to other brittle materials such as coatings and engineering ceramics.