New large grain, highly crystalline, transparent glass-ceramics

Two main reasons assure the transparency in the visible of some glass-ceramics (TGC): their crystal sizes are much smaller than the wavelength of light or the difference between the refractive index of glass matrix and crystal phase is small. The majority of traditional TGC have nano-size crystals and small to moderate crystallized volume fraction, usually between 3% and 70%. In this article we present a new type of transparent glass-ceramics having large (micrometric) grain size and very high crystallized volume fraction, which reaches up to 97%. Their high transparency mainly results from simultaneous variations of the glass matrix and crystal compositions during crystallization, which considerably decreases the difference between the respective refractive indexes, and this factor prevails, regardless of crystal size. Preliminary tests of their optical properties indicate that this new family of TGC can be further developed by doping with transition metals and rare-earths. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.