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Ultra-pure Glass Made with Levitation

Posted by michael on from the levitate-this dept.

lc_overlord writes "Space.com has a story on a new type of glass. 'Using static electricity fields to levitate the material, scientists were able to construct a pure glass, free of any contamination typically associated with containers.' The glass is made of rare earth aluminum oxide and small amounts of silicon dioxide."

24 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Frist PSot!"! by Dr.+GeneMachine · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And read TFA... One question - why do they want to conduct this experiments in microgravity, when the major effects stem from the contact-free nature of the production process? Any thoughts?

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    1. Re:Frist PSot!"! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The might want to prevent seperation of the Alumina and Silica, or help prevent larger eddies from convection from forming, or forming with a common orientation.

    2. Re:Frist PSot!"! by putaro · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because it's hard to levitate a significant amount of material?

    3. Re:Frist PSot!"! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I know soviets could do it with kilograms back in the day. Which compared to launching a foundtry into space, works out pretty good.

      Things are just a little weirder than is immediatly obvious when freed from gravity. There's more going on than, "Hey, free floating!"

    4. Re:Frist PSot!"! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      But compared to building one in space when the mass is already there, is pretty crappy if you're going to use the glass in orbit. If you're going to use it on earth, then manufacturing in space is probably not going to be very useful. On the other hand you could build bulky landing craft and splash your cargoes down in the ocean, then pick them up, and recycle the landing craft after extracting the cargo. This might be an effective way to drop cargoes from orbit before the development of the elevator.

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  2. Re: Fused Silica & Flying Cars by A55M0NKEY · · Score: 2

    I was wondering if anyone knew if it were feasible to pole fused ( amorphous ) SiO2 so that it was piezoelectric when it hardened similar to how piezo ceramics are poled today. I would especially be interested in a fluorescently doped piezoelectric substance - maybe SiO2 doped w/Nd?

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  3. Re:Not April Fools? by nadda · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I fail to see how this could be put to good use any time soon.
    Not sure about anytime soon, but seems if they can refine the process, could it lead to better fiber optics?

  4. Re:Hello Computer.... by K3lvin · · Score: 5, Funny

    So how long until we get transparent aluminium?

    It's already here, you just can't see it.

  5. Re:Hello Computer.... by rusty0101 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well, if you don't mind it being Aluminium Oxide, which is a ceramic, it's been around at least two years, Article, though I seem to recall seeing a varient of this before 2000 in a Popular Science magazine.

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  6. SuperGlass! by killyourblender · · Score: 1

    Here's an ironic application... Suppose the obscenely pure glass were used to make tiles to cover something passing in and out of orbit... such as a shuttle or satellite?

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    1. Re:SuperGlass! by ColaMan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Your glass, no matter how obscenely pure, would still melt.

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  7. Re:Not April Fools? by Oncogene · · Score: 1

    I can't even begin to imagine how they would combine this "sterile" process with that of fiber optic manufacturing. During the latter, wouldn't they face similar problems of contamination?

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  8. Re:Hello Computer.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sapphire has been around considerably longer than two years.

    Perhaps you were refering to nano-scale polycrystalline alumina, which has still be around longer than two years.

  9. hmm by Transcendent · · Score: 1

    Although it probably won't work for all manufacturing processes, technology like this is a nice step forward in getting ultra-pure processed materials. Sure, it may be a while, but obviously optics can gain an advantage with this.

    Now maybe they can finally make it so my bottled water doesn't taste like plastic.

    1. Re:hmm by AgentAce · · Score: 1

      you must drink Dasani...

  10. Low-tech Klein Bottle? by SkiifGeek · · Score: 1

    Is this a low-end Klein bottle for materials that would vaporise in contact with plasma?

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  11. I gotta start saving for... by cloudless.net · · Score: 1

    Canon will make even more expensive top-of-the-line camera lenses! As if the current L-glass lenses aren't expensive enough.

  12. Re:Eyeglasses by walt-sjc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Think less loss in fiber optic cables, better lenses for microscopes / telescopes, etc.

  13. Rare earth aluminium? by init256 · · Score: 1

    Err... What is "rare earth aluminium"? Had I missed my chemistry lessons at school?

    1. Re:Rare earth aluminium? by dirt_puppy · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'd say, they mean, aluminium oxide glass (amorphous AlO) doped with a tiny fraction rare earth salts. Many solid substance lasers use rare earthes today, YAG (Yttrium Aluminium Granat [sp?]) for example.

  14. Re:Eyeglasses by GlassMaster · · Score: 5, Informative

    As mentioned in the article, these ultra-pure glasses are needed for industrial lasers. Impurities or contamination in a laser glass can absorb the laser energy, be ioned, and explode within the laser glass. Tradionally, large scale glass melting is performed in ceramic refractory lined tanks. The problem is that glass melts are highly corrosive and a significant amount (any amount is significant when dealing with high powered lasers) of contamination will occur.

    For the laser glass blanks used for the National Ignition Facility NIF Website, U.S. taxpayers supplied platinum lined tanks to prevent refractory contamination in the glass blanks. However, even platinum is soluble in the phosphate based glasses used for these blanks. Platinum colloids would result in catastrophic failure of the glass once the lasers where powered up So, a great deal of research has been performed by the glass science community (thank you DOE) to learn how to alter the glass chemistry via composition or processing parameters in order to incorporate these tiny levels of platinum into the glass structure and render it harmless in the finished product.

    If significant quantities of these types of glasses could be made using containerless levitation, the expense of platinum lined glass tanks and challenges of neutralizing what little platinum contaminates the glasses would be eliminated.

  15. Aluminum Oxide? In other words... by Dr+Cool · · Score: 1

    In the words of Scotty (Star Trek IV), it's "Transparent Aluminum!"

  16. The perfect shot glass by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

    Yes indeed. This stuff would make for the perfect shot glass. Bottoms up on the JD.

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    Life is not for the lazy.
  17. Gravity pulls down, Static Elec pulls up by lcsjk · · Score: 1

    In earth's gravity, the experiment undergoes heating /cooling stresses that do not not exist in micro-gravity.