Presented annually, the Outstanding Publication Award recognizes an exemplary published paper for its impact on advancing science and technology in areas relevant to Corning’s strategic focus and expanding commercial opportunities for Corning.

Corning’s 2011 Outstanding Publication Award winning paper is:

Topological Principles of Borosilicate Glass Chemistry

Morten M. Smedskjaer,† John C. Mauro,*,† Randall E. Youngman,† Carrie L. Hogue,† Marcel Potuzak,† and Yuanzheng Yue‡,§
†Science and Technology Division, Corning Incorporated, Corning, New York 14831, United States
‡Section of Chemistry, Aalborg University, DK-9000 Aalborg, Denmark
§Shandong Key Laboratory for Glass and Ceramics, Shandong Polytechnic University, Jinan 250353, China

Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Vol. 115, pp. 12930-12946; 2011

Abstract
Borosilicate glasses display a rich complexity of chemical behavior depending on the details of their composition and thermal history. Noted for their high chemical durability and thermal shock resistance, borosilicate glasses have found a variety of important uses from common household and laboratory glassware to high-tech applications such as liquid crystal displays. In this paper, we investigate the topological principles of borosilicate glass chemistry covering the extremes from pure borate to pure silicate end members. Based on NMR measurements, we present a two-state statistical mechanical model of boron speciation in which addition of network modifiers leads to a competition between the formation of nonbridging oxygen and the conversion of boron from trigonal to tetrahedral configuration. Using this model, we derive a detailed topological representation of alkali --alkaline earth-- borosilicate glasses that enables the accurate prediction of properties such as glass transition temperature, liquid fragility, and hardness. The modeling approach enables an understanding of the microscopic mechanisms governing macroscopic properties. The implications of the glass topology are discussed in terms of both the temperature and thermal history dependence of the atomic bond constraints and the influence on relaxation behavior. We also observe a nonlinear evolution of the jump in isobaric heat capacity at the glass transition when substituting SiO2 for B2O3, which can be accurately predicted using a combined topological and thermodynamic modeling approach.

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