Glass Science and Glassmaking: A Personal Perspective

This paper demonstrates how glass has provided one of the earliest, and still rare, examples of controlled use of science at the nanolevel in a well-established gigatechnology. The glass community—from the Venetian glass makers (and the science of luminaries such as Michael Faraday and Isaac Newton) down through major industrial successes such as glass–ceramics—are examples of excellent nanoengineers practicing clever applications of manipulation of matter at the nano and subnano scale. This paper describes the evolution of the understanding of nanoheterogeneity of the structure (and composition of virtually all useful glasses) that has been the key evolutionary “invention” in this process. It then makes the case that glass (and polymer) technology has an enormous advantage over all of the nanomaterial technologies that are confronted with the enormous barrier of assembling large numbers of very small particles into useful products on a large scale, as recognized by the recently anointed patron saint of the present nanofever, Richard Feynman, in his only paper in the field. Finally, this paper introduces glass scientists to a radically new opportunity via a totally new way to convert crystalline matter into glasses (noncrystalline solids)—for all scientists interested in the glassy state.