Brazilian researchers develop special high-tech glass using niobium 

Brazilian researchers have developed a new method for producing glass. Now, Niobium is added, which could change the course of the technology sector.

High-quality glass is practically everywhere in our daily lives, from smartphone screens to microscope and telescope components for scientific research, as well as optical fibers for data transmission and even glass-ceramic orthoses that are increasingly used in medicine. . With a focus on innovating even more, Brazilian researchers have developed a technique that makes it possible to improve the mechanical and thermal stability of so-called special glasses using niobium.

New glass uses Niobium in its composition

Henrik Bradtmuller and other researchers from the Center for Research, Education and Innovation in Glass (CERTEV) based at the Federal University of São Carlos, showed, for the first time, that the use of niobium oxide in the production of silicon-based glasses generates a huge difference, resulting in the polymerization of the silicon network, increasing the density of bonds and the connectivity of the material.

Furthermore, higher levels of niobium lead to oxide clustering, increasing the electronic polarizability of the glass, with an essential impact on its optical properties, according to the researchers.

The superior quality of the new glass with niobium was attested by a union of computational models with experimental analysis, using spectroscopy by nuclear magnetic resonance and Raman spectroscopy.

According to Bradtmuller, the researchers' strategy, combining these two observational techniques in the new glass with computational modeling, could be used to study functional elements of several other types of glass, including optical materials, vitreous conductors of fast ions, bioactive glasses.

The initiative will facilitate the design of innovative glass formulations tailored to various applications. To cater for advanced applications on high-end devices tech, materials researchers are focusing on designing glasses with properties tailored to each application, using mainly computational resources such as machine learning.

Addition of Niobium to the glass generates a kind of polymerization of the silicon-oxygen network

To meet advanced applications, two critical factors are required, namely generating comprehensive and reliable databases and defining structural parameters that consider the complex physical-chemical nature of glass and its functional properties. This is where the main contribution of the Brazilian team comes in.

For Bradtmuller, there is a class of oxides, called intermediaries, which plays a strategic role in this new moment in technology. They do not form glasses under standard laboratory cooling conditions. Moreover, in the presence of other oxides, they can contribute significantly, generating hydrogen bonds and giving the formed glass properties of interest. This is the case with niobium oxide.

Glasses containing niobium are valued for their non-linear optical properties, with potential applications in optoelectric devices, as well as for their mechanical properties, being used in the manufacture of bioactive materials.

However, it was the Brazilian team of researchers who discovered that the addition of niobium generates a kind of polymerization of the silicon-oxygen network, expanding the connectivity of the elements that make up the glass, which makes niobium a network former. While in silicate glasses, at the scale of 5 to 10 nanometers, lithium ions are randomly distributed, niobium tends to form agglomerates, a type of structural arrangement that had never been observed before.

Why wasn't the study with niobium thought of before?

Bradtmuller concludes that, although several studies with Niobium have already been carried out, the structural role of niobium remains unclear, mainly due to the lack of systematic data from spectroscopic characterization. It was this lack of knowledge that the researchers' study filled.

In addition to the Brazilian researchers, scientists from Pennsylvania developed a new glass that is 10 times more resistant to shattering and cracking. The product is much less polluting, uses less energy, and can make glass production sustainable in the long term.