A new method of manufacturing glass could lead to the production of ‘designer glasses’ with applications in advanced photonics, whilst also facilitating industrial scale carbon capture and storage. An international team of researchers, writing today in the journal Nature Communications, report how they have managed to use a relatively new family of sponge-like porous materials to develop new hybrid glasses.
Dr Thomas Bennett from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge says: “Traditional methods used in melt-casting of metals or sintering of ceramics cause the structural collapse of MOFs due to the structures thermally degrading at low temperatures. Through exploring the interface between melting, recrystallisation and thermal decomposition, we now should be able to manufacture a variety of shapes and structures that were previously impossible, making applications for MOFs more industrially relevant".
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Image credit: Rosmarie Voegtli