What Is Driving the Growth of Inorganic Glass in Smart Materials and Opto-Electronic Devices?

May 29, 2021

Inorganic glass is a transparent functional material and one of the few materials that keeps leading innovation. In the last decades, inorganic glass was integrated into opto-electronic devices such as optical fibers, semiconductors, solar cells, transparent photovoltaic devices, or photonic crystals and in smart materials applications such as environmental, pharmaceutical, and medical sensors, reinforcing its influence as an essential material and providing potential growth opportunities for the market. Moreover, inorganic glass is the only material that is 100% recyclable and can incorporate other industrial offscourings and/or residues to be used as raw materials. Over time, inorganic glass experienced an extensive range of fabrication techniques, from traditional melting-quenching (with an immense diversity of protocols) to chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), and wet chemistry routes as sol-gel and solvothermal processes. Additive manufacturing (AM) was recently added to the list. Bulks (3D), thin/thick films (2D), flexible glass (2D), powders (2D), fibers (1D), and nanoparticles (NPs) (0D) are examples of possible inorganic glass architectures able to integrate smart materials and opto-electronic devices, leading to added-value products in a wide range of markets. In this review, selected examples of inorganic glasses in areas such as: (i) magnetic glass materials, (ii) solar cells and transparent photovoltaic devices, (iii) photonic crystal, and (iv) smart materials are presented and discussed.

Authors in the community:

• 

  L

  Laura Cristina de Jesus Pereira

  ist25370

  Affiliations and sources

  IST > C2TN

  Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias Nucleares

  IST > DECN

  Departamento de Engenharia e Ciências Nucleares

  In: orcid

  ID: 94699605

MDPI

Materials

2926

14

11

10.3390/ma14112926

661215700001

materials-engineering - Materials engineering

Keywords

• inorganic glass
• smart materials
• opto-electronic devices

eng - English

CC-BY - Attribution