Glass Crystallisation Research - A 36-Year Retrospective. Part 2: Methods Of Study And Glass-Ceramics

This article describes some relevant methods developed to study glass crystallisation. It also reviews a number of systematic studies created 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.