| Jul 03, 2012 |
New nanocrystal glass ceramic produced with capability of being machined
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(Nanowerk News) Iranian and Italian researchers succeeded in the synthesis of lithium-mica nanocrystal glass-ceramic through a new sol-gel method. The synthesized material has certain advantages like appropriate optical properties and can be machined.
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Glass-ceramics are ceramic polycrystals that are synthesized through known methods. These materials have various advantages over the ceramic powders, and therefore, they have much more applications.
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The research group synthesized lithium-mica nanocrystal glass-ceramic through sol-gel methods by using raw materials such as Mg(NO3)2.6H2O, LiNO3, aluminium isoperoxide, NH4F, and silica (see paper in Ceramics International: "Sol–gel preparation and characterization of nano-crystalline lithium–mica glass–ceramic"). No report has so far been observed for the synthesis of this compound through the said method.
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Analysis results showed that the crystals synthesized through the new sol-gel method were smaller than the crystals produced in the ordinary methods.
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By using the model suggested by Marotta, the researchers calculated the crystalline activation energy and Avrami parameter, and they explained the growth of the crystals by using the same method. Since the crystals are distributed homogeneously within the glassy phase in sol-gel method, the use of this method results in the homogeneity of the glass-ceramic structure, which is mandatory for the machining.
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