A method of manufacturing a lithium ion conductive glass ceramic, includes a step of forming granules using a material including an SiO.sub.2 source, a ZrO.sub.2 source, a P.sub.2O.sub.5 source and an Na.sub.2O source; a step of obtaining a powder including a glass ceramic by passing the granules under a heated gas phase atmosphere to melt the granules and solidifying the melted granules; a step of obtaining a target object including a glass ceramic by performing a heat treatment on the powder to precipitate crystals; and a step of obtaining a lithium ion conductive glass ceramic by performing an ion-exchange process on the target object in molten salt including lithium ions.

Apparatus, systems and methods for refining molten glass include a fining chamber having a refractory floor and a sidewall structure that may include a refractory liner, and includes an inlet transition region having increasing width from initial to a final width, and depth decreasing from an initial to final depth. The floor includes a raised curb having width equal to final width of the inlet transition region, curb length less than the length of the inlet transition region, and curb height forming a shallowest depth portion of the fining chamber. The raised curb separates the fining chamber into the inlet transition region and a primary fining region, the primary fining region defined by the refractory floor and sidewall structure. The primary fining region has a constant depth greater than the shallowest depth but less than the depth of the inlet transition region.

Glass compositions include boron oxide (B.sub.2O.sub.3), lanthanum oxide (La.sub.2O.sub.3), titania (TiO.sub.2) and niobia (Nb.sub.2O.sub.5) as essential components and may optionally include silica (SiO.sub.2), tungsten oxide (WO.sub.3), zirconia (ZrO.sub.2), yttria (Y.sub.2O.sub.3), bismuth oxide (Bi.sub.2O.sub.3), barium oxide (BaO), TeO.sub.2 and other components. The glasses may be characterized by high refractive index at 587.56 nm at comparably low liquidus temperature.

A method of of fining low-density submerged combustion glass includes introducing unfined molten glass produced in a submerged combustion melter into a fining chamber of a fining tank and, further, introducing additive particles into the fining chamber that comprise a glass reactant material and one or more fining agents. The one or more fining agents are released into the molten glass bath upon consumption of the additive particles in the molten glass bath to chemically fine the molten glass bath and the glass reactant material includes one or more materials that integrate into the molten glass bath upon melting. Additionally, the method includes discharging fined molten glass out of the fining chamber of the fining tank. The discharged fined molten glass has a volume percentage of gas bubbles that is less than the volume percentage of gas bubbles in the unfined molten glass introduced into the fining chamber.

Borate-glass biomaterials comprising: aNa.sub.2O. bCaO. cP.sub.2O.sub.5. dB.sub.2O.sub.3 wherein a is from about 1-40 wt %, b is from about 10-40 wt %, c is from about 1-40 wt %, and d is from about 35-80 wt %; and wherein the biomaterial has a surface area per mass of more than about 5 m.sup.2/g. Methods of making and uses of these biomaterials.

Microspheres comprising a plurality of hollow microspheres, each of the plurality of hollow microspheres comprising a plurality of glass walls, and a plurality of hollow spaces, wherein the plurality of glass walls enclosing at least one of the plurality of hollow spaces, wherein the plurality of glass walls comprising a second glass, wherein the second glass comprising a processed first glass melt, wherein the processed first glass melt comprising a melt of a batch and a plurality of redox active group components capable of providing at least one of a plurality of redox reactions and a plurality of events in the second glass.

A method for forming a laminated glass article may include flowing a molten first glass composition having a first R.sub.2O concentration and a first fining agent with a first fining agent concentration. The method may also include flowing a molten second glass composition having a second R.sub.2O concentration less than the first R.sub.2O concentration of the first glass composition and a second fining agent with a second fining agent concentration that is greater than or equal to the first fining agent concentration of the first glass composition. The molten first glass composition may be contacted with the molten second glass composition to form an interface between the molten first glass composition and the molten second glass composition.

High energy density multi-layer capacitors comprise inner electrodes buried within thin layers of alkali-free glass. The multi-layer glass capacitor can be fabricated by heating a plurality of capacitor layers above the annealing temperature of the glass to thermal bond the layers together. The edge margin of the buried electrodes can be selected to provide an adequate protection level from high-voltage flashover of the multi-layer glass capacitor. For example, an edge margin of 0.125″ can hold off about 10 kV in air.

A composite silica glass made light diffusion member includes a dense silica glass, and a porous silica glass which has been layered on the surface of the dense silica glass. The porous silica glass is a porous body and has a homogeneous pore distribution. The porous body has a framework including a plurality of spherical silica glasses, contains a communicating pore part formed by spaces among them, and has a central pore size of 10 to 20 μm and a porosity of 25 to 40%. The spherical silica glasses have an average diameter of 30 to 100 μm. An average value of a specific arithmetic average roughness Ra in each of the spherical silica glass exposed on an outer surface of the porous silica glass is 0.8 to 4.0 nm.

A semi-transparent coating material for coating glass or glass ceramics includes at least one sol-gel hybrid-polymer coating system having a hybrid-polymer or inorganic sol-gel-based matrix, and nanoparticles and nanoscale pigments and/or dyes are added to the hybrid-polymer or inorganic sol-gel-based matrix.