Glass Crystallization Research – A 36‐Year Retrospective. Part II , Methods of Study and Glass‐Ceramics

Most of our original studies on the fundamental scientific aspects of glass crystallization were reviewed in P art I of this article. In this part, we describe some relevant methods we developed to study glass crystallization and review a number of systematic studies that we conducted to develop, improve, or characterize some types of glass‐ceramics, such as bioactive glass‐ceramics; photo‐thermo‐refractive glasses (or glass‐ceramics because the “active” components are sodium fluoride nanocrystals embedded in a glass matrix); new glass‐ceramics derived from blast furnace and steel‐making slags (hard materials for architecture and construction); sintered glass‐ceramics that emulate expensive stones such as marble and granite; and the first large‐grain, highly crystalline optically transparent glass‐ceramic.