About the book
Glass-ceramics have been described as polycrystalline materials of fine microstructure that are produced by controlling the nucleation and crystal phases growth within the glass. The glass is firstly melted, produced to shape, and thermally converted into mostly crystalline ceramics. The distribution of these crystalline phases in the glass matrix increases the uniformity of the material and, by comparison, effectively limits crack growth. The technologies of glass-ceramic have developed rapidly in the past few decades due to the excellent mechanical and thermal properties of these materials. These properties are attractive to replace traditional materials and can also meet the technical requirements of new applications, such as radome and coatings. Glass ceramics are receiving great attention due to their diversity of applications, which have the potential to meet the recent requirements of advanced mechanical, optical and biomedical applications. This book covers a wide range of topics such as glass-ceramic forming, shaping, and production, structure, properties, testing and characterizations, nucleation and crystallization, application of building materials, military, electronics, cooking ceramics, machinable ceramics, biomedical and optical materials.
