Technology
Episode 110: LionGlass
In Episode 110 of the Materialism Podcast, hosts Andrew Falkowski and Jared explore the innovative field of LionGlass, a new type of glass developed to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions i...
Episode 110: LionGlass
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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I would like to describe a field in which little has been done, but in which an enormous
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amount can be done.
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This field is not quite the same as the others, and that it will tell us little of fundamental
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physics, but it will tell us much about the strange phenomena that occurred just below
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our perception.
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In contrast to the natural philosophers of the past, the scientists of this field delve
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into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding places.
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Their quest is to understand and create the imperceptible.
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After all, there is plenty of room at the bottom.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the materialism podcast and exploration of the past, present, and
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future of material science and engineering.
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My name is Andrew Falkowski and I'm joined by Jared.
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Jared has a going.
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It's going good.
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You know, summer semester's over now, and I reveled in my two weeks off before getting
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right back into it.
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How's the new semester going?
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I don't actually really know yet because one of the professors is taking the first week
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off because he's having issues getting the classes recorded.
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And since I'm remote, I can't see anything if they can't get recorded.
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He's very nice and he's like working with us on this so I don't blame him at all, but
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I guess he's having some technological issues.
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So we're not really sure where the class is going to be like just yet.
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That's a bummer.
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Hopefully he can resolve that quickly.
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I'm not sure.
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He's probably running out of time.
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No, he got it.
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He did get it sorted by now, I think, but I have yet to watch the first class just yet.
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But I'm excited.
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It's a space structure class.
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I've always wanted to do a space structure.
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It's one I'm very interested in that aspect of it because I think it's obviously a little
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different than making structures on earth.
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So I'm excited for that.
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What about you?
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What do you been up to?
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Well, semester started here too.
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Been dealing with the usual start of the semester things.
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It's a lot of weird grad school things.
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You're all done with classes though, right?
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I am.
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I just have to take the seminar.
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Yeah, and then besides that, I've been using baking as a creative outlet.
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I'm into making Biscotti.
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I remember we got dinner recently and you were talking that you had made a Biscotti
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and it wasn't good, but you said it wasn't there yet.
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I...
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That is an unspeakable batch.
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That was batch one.
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It was terrible.
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I completely screwed it up and...
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I was trying to be nice.
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Not my fault.
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I was trying to be nice, but yeah.
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Did say you did bad.
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The recipe left out a crucial step and that just caused it to...
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It was a disaster.
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I have gotten a lot better since and I've really been able to apply some material science
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knowledge to it too.
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Well, it is cooking if not material science.
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Have that episode about chocolate as material science, if you think about it.
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That was a long time ago.
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Oh, you know, also speaking of creative outlets, I've been on the 3D printing grind.
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Which has been a lot of fun.
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Oh, yeah.
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Got a resin printer.
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I think the resin printer and it's messy.
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It's really, really disgustingly messy.
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It's like, you're going out of the goo and you got a washer and you got to put it in
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that LED curing oven thing.
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The worst part is I had the tank explode, basically.
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There's a hole that ripped in the bottom and it spilled out and it sort of seals itself
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back up, obviously, because the light was still flashing.
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It was still going.
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So it was like hardening, but enough spilled out.
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It spilled all in it.
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So I actually had to take the resin printer completely apart like every part out and
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do that fun.
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Is that fun as a mechanical engineer?
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Oh, yeah.
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It was fun.
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I actually really enjoyed it, but the thing was, if I was doing it for fun to learn about
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it, it would have been awesome.
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Doing it because it was essentially completely bricked was not as fun.
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And then I ended up having to like replace a part or two because they were just so disgusting
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that no amount of cleaning was getting the resin residue off of it.
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And then my LCD screen, the resin had cooked so thoroughly that when I tried to get it
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off, check this out.
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This is crazy.
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The polarization filter for the LCD screen came off with the resin.
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And so my screen was fundamentally useless.
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And so I had to get a new screen.
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It was an expensive lesson in keeping things clean and also I don't even know what caused
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the resin or this puncture in my resin tank.
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That's unfortunate.
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It sounds like it's up and running again.
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We had one of those, a couple of them when I was in industry and they were, they were
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awesome.
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The resolution that you can get like, and the quality is just much better compared to
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like an extruder printer.
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You can make some pretty nice prototype parts.
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It's night and day when it was working and now that's working again, it was just so
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incredibly fun.
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It was just that small down period where admittedly probably my fault, I'm sure I did something
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wrong, but whatever it is, I fixed everything.
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I got a little sort down where I was like, they said miserable, but it's really fun.
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And you know what I ended up having to do to make sure to keep it safe is I got a good
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glass screen protector for my LCD.
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That was a nice hard glass.
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What a great transition, Jared.
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That's what we're talking about today.
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Oh really?
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Indeed, glass is a ubiquitous material.
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It's all over.
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In fact, there's several glass items in the room with us right now, but making all this
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isn't cheap.
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Glass is made of silica, which has a pretty high melting point and that has a pretty big
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impact, right?
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In order to heat glass up to the point where it can melt and be processed and formed
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into all these different form factors that we have all around us, it takes quite a
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bit of energy.
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Not to mention that a lot of the precursors to making common glasses like soda line glass
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or silica glass are bonded to carbon.
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And in the process of making that glass undergo a calcining process where that carbon is
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burned off and forms CO2, the US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that black glass,
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which is the common glass that's being used for windows and such, is a direct carbon footprint
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of about 0.5 tons of CO2 per ton of glass manufactured.
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But a full life cycle analysis found that window glass used in residential building is
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the equivalent global warming contribution of about 2.1, 2.2 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram
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produced.
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Yeah, actually, it's funny.
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I saw an article that was talking about how people think about building.
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You think about how much CO2 is produced in steel or concrete or things like that, but
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glass is something that kind of flies under the radar for a lot of people when it comes
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to its actual impact on our environment.
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Yeah, and the split is a little interesting.
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So about 60 to 80% of that carbon footprint is just from the energy needed to melt it
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alone while the remaining 20 to 40% is emitted from the decomposition of those precursor
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materials.
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Hang.
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So there's clearly some room for improvement here.
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Yeah, and so this is where lying glass steps in.
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This is from John Marrow's group at Penn State University, and they wanted to address
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this problem by trying to lower that melting point and make a glass that was potentially
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commercially viable while also cutting emissions group both a reduction in energy and a reduction
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in the amount of carbon-acious products that have to be used.
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And recently in July or so, an article came out giving us a little more details about
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what lying glass is made of and what its properties are.
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And so we wanted to dive in that.
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And in the course of that, we discovered some really interesting glass chemistry.
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And so in this episode, we're going to be walking through some unique aspects of glass
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chemistry and what makes lying glass so special.
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I will say that the first thing that caught me about lying glass was that it was called
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lying glass.
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I thought maybe it was a joke on gorilla glass at first.
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I didn't realize that it's the Penn State Penn State's with the lines.
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The NETS line.
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You know, kind of an embarrassing confession.
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I don't know what it is about Penn State's logo, but it looks like a shark to me.
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I don't know.
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Yeah, I don't, I messed up as something.
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When I look at it like in a one-second glance, I don't see the line.
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I don't think that I see that staring at this logo, but I could understand how it could
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maybe look like the water swirling around in a shark fin is coming out.
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I think I do see that.
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I think that their logo is maybe abstract enough for that.
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Well, it kind of looks like they're updating it.
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They have one that the line is much clearer.
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I do see on, I was on the sustainability page.
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Obviously, I do research for this and I have it open and I can see.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, okay.
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So that's that one.
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I know.
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That's what I have.
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That's what I said.
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It's just a little too abstract.
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I can see it actually now that I'm really taking it in.
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I see the line.
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See, that's why I said, but if you look at it, it looks like a shark circling in the water.
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Oh, that's not even how I see it.
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Oh, interesting.
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Okay.
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Well, clearly, you need to look this logo up and give us your thoughts on it.
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Now, this isn't the first time we've talked about glass on this podcast.
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You can go back to episode 107 where we sat down with some people from shot to talk about
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the interesting glass work that they're doing and even further because glass extends beyond
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just oxides to metals.
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We, episode 99, we had one on bulk metallic glasses for how you can get metals to behave
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in glassy ways.
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But we want to take some time to review some of the basics of glass and expand what we'd
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covered in these previous episodes.
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As you may know, if you cool the material fast enough, you can prevent the crystalline
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ordering of the atoms in the solid, effectively freezing them in an amorphous state similar
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to a liquid structure.
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Turns out the rate at which you cool them also affects the degree to which they can locally
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order and that can change things like the density and the refractive index.
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If you looked at glass on an atomic scale, you're looking at basically a random network
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of oxygens that are going to be bonded to different ions, basically chains.
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Glass compositions are often viewed in terms of network formers, ions that are going to
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form that network and then network modifiers.
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These are ions that are going to disrupt that network and change its properties.
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But it's often a little more complicated than that.
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A traditional classification system actually has three categories that are based on an
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ion's field strength divided by its ionic radius.
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Network formers have a very high field strength.
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These are going to be things like the ions of silicon, boron, phosphorus, and arsenic
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bonded to oxygen.
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Now the network formers are just one small part of this.
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In some cases, maybe to enhance the processing to maybe lower the melting point or to change
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its optical properties, we want to change this network.
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And this is where network modifiers come in.
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They have a really low field strength and they're things like sodium, potassium, calcium
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and barium.
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Network modifiers disrupt this network through the creation of non-bonding oxygens.
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So when NA2O is added, the O2- will break that OSiO linkage, creating these non-bonding
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oxygen sites that have like a 1-charge and then they're balanced by a sodium, for example.
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The more that you add, the shorter these continuous chains get, allowing them to slide
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past one another, and that's how you could reduce the melting temperature.
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So could you theoretically make a glass using only network formers?
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Yes, but you might not want to do that because it'll hurt your process ability.
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Silicon oxide has a melting temperature of 2,000 degrees Celsius.
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That's really hot and it would take a lot to actually get up to.
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Sure.
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Adding things like sodium or calcium, which are often added to, I mean, so to line
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glass, for example, a common composition is a silicate with sodium oxide and calcium
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oxide, lowers that melting temperature down to something like 1,500 Celsius.
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Still pretty hot, but certainly a lot better.
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So that's kind of the motivation for why you would add those.
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The last category are intermediates.
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These are the chameleons of the glass chemistry world because they can both be a network
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former and a network modifier depending on the composition of the glass and their local
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environment.
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Take aluminum, for example, it wants to typically take on a 3-plus charge.
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So it can be a network former if it's tetrahedrially coordinated and it can be a network modifier
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if it's octahedral-accoordinated.
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And this comes down to the glass composition.
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So if there's sufficient charge, balance to allow for ALO4- to be present, then this
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will act as a network former, otherwise it's going to create non-bridgeing oxygens.
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What makes these really interesting is that it can actually be both simultaneously in
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different localized regions of the glass.
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It's also worth noting that the bond strengths will determine the strengthening effect of these
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network formers as well as the chemical durability of the glass.
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Aluminum oxide is a much stronger bond strength than zirconium oxide versus iron oxide versus
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calcium oxide.
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So these additions also contribute to those macroscopic properties.
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And chemical durability, for those who don't know, is a materials ability to resist chemical,
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physical changes, decomposition, things like that when it's exposed to external agents.
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And this is really important, especially for glass.
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Because if you think about it, you're constantly likely, if you keep clean, constantly spraying
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chemicals and water and things on these glass.
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And so if you have something that negatively interacts with that, you're damaging the glass.
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So you want to have a high chemical durability so that your glass isn't falling apart after
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a few years of water and chemicals hitting it.
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Yeah, I feel like I've seen glasses where it looks like it's been etched away a little
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bit.
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And like, harsher chemicals can do that if it's a cheaper glass or maybe it doesn't have
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that chemical durability.
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Or maybe they're just using the wrong kind of glass cleaner.
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Well, I mean, this is why glasses that are used for lab equipment are very different than
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what's used on windows because it's a much harsher environment that they're dealing with.
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Now, this whole distinction between network former network modifier and intermediate is
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traditionally how it's been viewed.
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But it's considerably more complicated.
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And these days, there's more of a continuum rather than discrete understanding.
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This is due to coordination flexibility, composition dependence, processing effects,
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and even competing interactions between different intermediates.
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So it's a much more dynamic system than is being presented.
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But hopefully this is a helpful overview.
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Before we get into lying glass specifically, it's just worth mentioning the compositions
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of some common ones like soda lime glass, which is what a lot of black glasses made of,
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or what windows are largely made of.
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This is typically going to be made from silica sodium carbonate and calcium carbonate.
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The carbon is going to get burned off in the process.
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But you can see that in doing this, we're adding sodium and calcium to try to lower that
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melting point.
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And it's around 1500 c versus pure silica is about 2000 c.
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Or a silicate glass is very similar, except that odds are boron oxide to change the thermal
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expansion coefficient.
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These have been silicate based glasses.
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But the lying glass from John Mara's group does something different in attempt to really
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bring down that melting temperature.
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It's a phosphate based class.
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And people have been aware of phosphate glasses before, right?
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This isn't like a new invention.
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Yeah, they're not necessarily brand new.
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They've been understood and known.
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But typically their chemical durability and their strength and other properties haven't
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really been up to par.
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Right now there's a lot of research on them for nuclear waste containment, but not
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so much in terms of replacing things like windows.
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If you look in the literature, you can find plenty of articles about zasp glasses, which
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are what is zinc, aluminum, silica, phosphate glasses, which is technically the family
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that this falls under.
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So in their paper that they put out in July, they present a composition of some glass that's
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from this larger lying glass family of glasses that they're describing.
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So let's go through the three categories for the composition of glass then.
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What are the network formers?
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Right, so the main one that I mentioned is phosphorus pentoxide.
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It's a dominant network former.
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They also have a little bit of silica in there too.
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And phosphorus pentoxide is very interesting because it takes on a plus five large state.
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So for its tetrahedra, it actually has a non-bridgeing double bonded oxygen.
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And then three bridging oxygens.
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And then depending on the number of modifiers that are present, you can reduce the number
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of bridging oxygens that are there.
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These tend to be weaker bonds compared to silica.
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And so the melting point is definitely lower as a result of this.
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And it is worth noting when you say man, you really do mean man, it's 40% and the silica
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on oxide is only 15.7% so it takes up a much larger portion than anything else.
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So what about the modifiers?
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Yeah, this tends to have very traditional ones in terms of sodium and calcium.
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There's also some magnesium oxide thrown in there.
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I'm not exactly sure.
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That's an intermediate that can play a number of different roles.
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But it's likely there to improve the processing window would be my guess.
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I think where it really gets interesting is in the intermediates.
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It has two.
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First, it has alumina that's being added.
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This is probably being added to mostly strengthen the network and try to probably increase
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the melting temperature a little bit and improve the chemical durability and strength
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of the overall glass.
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Looking at the amount of modifiers that are present, it's potentially shifting alumina
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into a network former state.
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The other big one that's being added at 18% is zinc oxide.
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And zinc oxide is very interesting because it can form a tetrahedra, pentahedra, or octahedra
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simultaneously.
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So it can play a lot of different roles.
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But what's really interesting is there's a study they reference in the paper where under
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pressure zinc can change its coordination environment, transitioning through basically
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depolymerization and then repolymerization as a function of the applied pressure.
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And what this flexibility does that allows glass to accommodate mechanical stress or
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pressure that's applied to it through like a reversible structural reorganization rather
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than fracture.
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Basically, it's an energy absorption mechanism.
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I was going to say that is huge for glass because obviously glass is famous for it.
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It's very brittle.
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Yeah, it's being brittle and cracking.
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So being able to actually absorb some amount of pressure before that happens is a big deal.
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Exactly.
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And, you know, looking at through this composition on that, by no means a glass expert,
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but especially when you look at it within the literature, a lot of the explanations and
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the additions to try to improve the performance of phosphate glasses, which were known for
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being rather poor, make a lot of sense.
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Okay, so now even idea of the composition and they added a lot of things into it, but
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the big target that they were going for is lowering the melting point and the forming
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temperatures.
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And this is a huge deal.
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The line glass actually melts at about 1100 degrees Celsius, whereas sodium lime silicate
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melts at about 1500 degrees Celsius.
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So it's a big difference.
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And the reason this matters so much, excluding anything to do with the properties is just
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the fact that you're saving a lot of energy and in doing so, you're also cutting carbon
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emissions.
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I think it's very funny.
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They kind of focus on the carbon emissions side, but I was like, also, if you think about
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it, you're saving a lot of money because every time you don't use energy, that's a lower
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energy bill.
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And then also your furnaces don't have to be as good.
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They don't have to get as hot.
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They don't get as much thermal stress on them like across the board.
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I don't know how expensive it is to get the components, but at least on the heating
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side, you do save some money.
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Yeah, potentially a huge win if it can be scaled up.
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The other thing is they mention in their article, the ability to source a number of the
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intermediates and the modifiers in non-carbonatious forms.
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So rather than using sodium carbonator, calcium carbonate, they can actually get them bonded
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to a phosphate and add things together through there.
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I'm not sure what the cost difference is.
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It's always really hard to determine with these because economies of scale with the existing
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glass industry kind of obfuscate the true cost of things relative to one another, but
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that could also potentially lower carbon emissions through the precursors.
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Yeah, obviously that's so important because normally when it gets heated up, they create
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the CO2 and then also you're saving in the energy, which is CO2.
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So it does appear to be more environmentally friendly.
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But melting points, not everything in terms of glass.
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A lot of people are interested in the formability and the relaxation as it cools down.
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This is typically going to be looked at in terms of its glass transition temperature.
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It has a glass transition temperature of about 444 degrees C versus the 570C for soda line glass.
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So another reduction there.
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And it has this fragility index of about 36.
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Fragility is such a strange term for this.
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Yeah, basically it measures how sharply the viscosity increases as temperature drops towards
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your glass transition temperature.
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And it's about 36, which is similar.
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And basically what this means is that line glass relaxes structurally at a similar rate
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as soda line glass, but at a lower temperature.
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Yeah, which is obviously good for people who want to work forming glass or things like that,
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because it means that they're still getting a similar behavior for glass forming,
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but at a much lower temperature.
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What about hardness?
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So line glass does have a lower indentation hardness than typical glass,
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which means it probably will scratch easier and it may not be as hard.
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Yeah, and a lot of that's due to those just weaker phosphate bonds.
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But I guess that's it's sort of a question of use case.
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You know, if you're not worried about things scratching or hitting it,
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then it may be worth the savings and energy and also in emissions.
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Yeah, but remember, we mentioned that it has that zinc oxide.
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It has a lot of it in there.
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And zinc has that great ability to change its polymerization and its coordination environment
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as like an energy dissipation mechanism.
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And this actually helps it because line glass has like 10 times the crack resistance compared
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to soda line glass.
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Even at one kilogram force load, they don't reach like 50% crack initiation.
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If you look in their paper, they have like their like indentations where they show like they're
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putting this pyramid indenture into it.
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And for the soda line glass, you see cracks that are propagating off of it.
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Yeah, but for the line glass, they don't see any.
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And in fact, they like they took their indenture to its maximum level and they they weren't able
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to get a consistent crack formation.
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So that's interesting.
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So it almost means that this glass, while it may get a little more banged up,
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it won't crack or break in the same way.
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So maybe you'll have a few more scratches and dense in your glass,
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but you won't have actual cracks ruining the entire glass.
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The next property is the coefficient of thermal expansion.
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And obviously, this is kind of an important one if you think about the fact that
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glasses often used in places that get heat, for example, your windows.
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So you need to have at least similar, if not better, thermal expansion.
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Because the last thing you want is your glass swelling up on you because obviously it's meant
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to sit in these spots that hold the glass pain in.
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So if it expands, it's not great.
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And actually, the coefficient of thermal expansion for line glass is lower than soda line
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when you're below 270 degrees Celsius, which is fine because I don't think there's a lot of
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use cases for glass above 270 degrees Celsius, unless I guess may be for oven glass.
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So I don't think it's a huge issue.
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Okay, but elephant in the room for me is, is it transparent?
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You know, if this is going to replace windows, yeah, obviously,
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it needs to be effectively.
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And it turns out that it is effectively very similar in the visible light range to soda line glass.
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There's some slight difference, but I don't think human perception could tell.
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It's one of those things where if it's a negligible difference and you're getting other
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benefits, then there's no reason not to switch.
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Yeah, and I mean, this is to say, even though it has phosphates, which can have like a weird
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connectivity, it's sufficiently connected probably because of the silica and the alumina and maybe
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the zinc to reduce scattering and maintain that high transparency. The other thing that's
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really important is finding behavior. What is finding?
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Just during processing, you can get air bubbles and other sorts of gases that are stuck in it.
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And so finding is just the process of heating it up just enough so that the viscosity lowers so
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that bubbles can escape. Okay. And it has a lower finding temperature, meaning that you can do
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this process at a much lower temperature compared to soda line glass as well.
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And it's really just because of the lower viscosity for the same temperature range.
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Yeah. So in a way, there's also a little energy savings in the production of it then too.
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Not just that else. It stands beyond just the melting, but in the finding as well.
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I mean, across the board, it obviously it's early. It really does seem like there are a lot of
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benefits. There are a few drawbacks and things to figure out. And you make a great point about
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the economy of scale, like we have built the massive industry for years around one specific type of
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glass and even recycling and other things like that are going to be a new challenge. And they're
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going to be different than how things are done. But it does seem like it could be a promising
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type of glass, at least for specific applications for sure.
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Yeah. Actually from John Marrow himself, we had reached out. He had said,
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beyond its practical use as a low carbon alternative to traditional soda line silicate glass.
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His hope was that line glass could capture the public's imagination about what's
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possible within material science and engineering, especially within the field of glass.
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And in researching for this episode, I learned a lot more about what could be done with glass.
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It's more than just silicates. And that there's a lot of really interesting chemistry and
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physics going on there. And if this became possible much later than the discovery of phosphate
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classes, what other treasures are awaiting in the chemical world of glasses?
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You know what a big thought I was having to do is, and this is silly, but for people who want to
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do like glass farming as a hobby, theoretically, this would create a lower barrier of entry.
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If the burnus and things don't need to go as hot and things like that, because it means that you
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could get gear that isn't as expensive. Yeah, possibly. Yeah, I know.
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The thing is, yeah, possibly all of a sudden, your crack resistance is lower. There's a
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transfer light weighting potentially reducing the amount and the thickness that you need.
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Yeah. Well, this has just been a really exciting episode. I feel like we both learned a lot.
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And I hope, just as John Marrow said, that this inspires more people to consider glass
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and what's possible within it.
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If you've been listening to the last couple episodes, you may already be familiar with the
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American Ceramic Society's Bulletin, but did you know that you can ask so right for the Bulletin?
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Each Bulletin issue offers exclusive content written by industry experts,
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thought leaders, and in-depth discussion of market trends and technical insights and extensive
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coverage of the latest innovations in the ceramic and glass material science space.
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In writing for acers, you'll work directly with their editor who will help your research and
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expertise shine, putting your best foot forward. And thank you to the American Ceramic Society for
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sponsoring this episode. If you are an expert in a glass or ceramic space, consider writing an
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article for their Bulletin. The Machiazum podcast is also sponsored by materials today.
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Visit materialscaday.com to stay up to date on the latest happenings in the material science
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field and read some fantastic articles that they have published. You can also head over to
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elseavir.com to find out more about their journals, books, conferences, and related programs.
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As always, thank you for listening to this episode of the materials and podcast. If you have
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questions or feedback, please send us emails at materials and dot podcast at gmail.com.
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Make sure you subscribe to the show and I tune Spotify, YouTube, wherever you find your podcasts.
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And if you like the show, you want to help us reach more people, consider leaving a review,
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telling us what you think, how we can improve, and what material you'd like to hear about next.
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Finally, you can check out our Instagram page at materialism.podcast and see lots of cool art,
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connect with us, message us, and help us shape the future of the materialism podcast.
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We'd like to give a shout out to Alpha Bonn and Colobite for making music for this podcast.
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They make a ton of cool synthwaist stuff. You can find them on Spotify and YouTube. Thanks for listening.
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Catch you next time.
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This is Silke Coffey, the makers of tools, the captors of lightning, the architect, the engineer,
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the musician, our all beneficiaries of the materials of this world, and are bound only by their
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imaginations in manipulating those materials.