Glass-ceramic

Glass-ceramics are polycrystalline material produced through controlled crystallization of base glass. Glass-ceramic materials share many properties with both glasses and ceramics. Glass-ceramics have an amorphous phase and one or more crystalline phases and are produced by a so called "controlled crystallization" in contrast to a spontaneous crystallization, which is usually not wanted in glass manufacturing. Glass-ceramics have the fabrication advantage of glass as well as special properties of ceramics. Glass-ceramics usually have between 30% to 90% crystallinity and yield an array of materials with interesting properties like zero porosity, high strength, toughness, translucency or opacity, pigmentation, opalescence, low or even negative thermal expansion, high temperature stability, fluorescence, machinability, ferromagnetism, resorbability or high chemical durability, biocompatibility, bio-activity, ion conductivity, superconductivity, isolation capabilities, low dielectric constant and loss, high resistivity and break down voltage. These properties can be tailored by controlling the base glass composition and by controlled heat treatment/crystallization of base glass.