Mechanical properties and structural characterization of transparent 30BaO-15TiO2-55SiO2 glass-ceramics

Glass-ceramics have many interesting properties such as excellent optical transparency, thermal shock resistance and good mechanical properties. They have thus been widely used in various practical applications. Glass-ceramics based on the BaO-TiO2-SiO2 (BTS) system have been extensively studied because of the excellent dielectric and nonlinear optical properties of fresnoite Ba2TiSi2O8.
§ Increasing the content of crystals in glass-ceramics can improve their mechanical properties, but this may reduce the light transmittance, so improving the mechanical properties of glass-ceramics while ensuring their transparency is the key challenge.
§ Here, we heat-treat the 30BaO-15TiO2-55SiO2 glass at 860°C for 2 h, 4 h, and 8 h. We observe the crystal morphology by SEM. The hardness, crack resistance (CR) and indentation toughness (KIc_INT) of glass-ceramics was measured by indentation method. Fracture toughness (KIc_SEPB) was also tested by single-edge precracked beam (SEPB) method. In addition, XRD and Raman spectroscopy were used to assist in the structural understanding of the observed mechanical properties.