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Humans primarily interact with information technology through glass touch screens, and the world would indeed be unrecognizable without glass. However, the low toughness of oxide glasses continues to be their Achilles heel, limiting both future applications and the possibility to make thinner, more environmentally friendly glasses. Here, we show that with proper control of plasticity mechanisms, record-high values of fracture toughness for transparent bulk oxide glasses can be achieved. Through proper combination of gas-mediated permanent densification and rational composition design, we increase the glasses' propensity for plastic deformation. Specifically, we demonstrate a fracture toughness of an aluminoborate glass (1.4 MPa m0.5) that is twice as high as that of commercial glasses for mobile devices. Atomistic simulations reveal that the densification of the adaptive aluminoborate network increases coordination number changes and bond swapping, ultimately enhancing plasticity and toughness upon fracture. Our findings thus provide general insights into the intrinsic toughening mechanisms of oxide glasses.

International audience; Revealing the deformation mechanism of brittle materials under sharp contact loading (indentation) is important for their applications since this knowledge is crucial for identifying the origin of flaw and scratch formation on their surfaces. As a newly emerged glass family, metal-organic framework (MOF) glasses have not been studied concerning the mechanism of their indentation-induced deformation. Here, we explore this mechanism for ZIF-62 glass (a typical MOF glass system). The fractions of densification and shear flow during indentation were determined by atomic force microscopy, while the elastic deformation was measured via nanoindentation. The results show that ZIF-62 glass deforms primarily through densification and elastic deformation under the sharp contact loading. Significant pile-ups around indents were not observed, indicating that no or limited shear flow occurs in the glass during indentation. This behavior could be attributed to three structural factors, namely, high free volume, easily densified glass structure, and limited translational mobility of structural units.

International audience; The effect of spherulitic crystallization on the elastic moduli and fracture toughness of a barium aluminum silicate glass was investigated. The crystallization process results in Ba2Si3O8 phase and is initiated from Ba rich nuclei. Nucleation is optimal in the 690-720 °C interval. Young's modulus is increased by 12.5% when the glass-ceramic conversion is nearly complete. Nevertheless, as the size and the volume fraction of crystals are increased, some microcracking shows up upon cooling from the crystallization temperature. An optimal improvement of the fracture toughness (SEPB method) by 27 % is observed for a 49 % volume fraction of 5 to 10 μm large spherulites.

International audience; The role of temperature (T) and moisture on fracture toughness (KIc) of glasses, as measured by the single-edge precracked beam method (SEPB), is investigated. The brittle to ductile temperature, shown by an increase of KIc, is ~Tg. At T below 0.9Tg, the decrease of the bond strength with T results in the decrease of both the fracture surface energy and Young's modulus, so that KIc decreases with T. From above Tg to below 1.1Tg, the work of fracture increases because of dissipative processes, including confined viscoplasticity and blunting at the crack front. From 1.1Tg, viscous flow extends to the whole specimen and becomes more uniform, resulting in the macroscopic deformation of the specimen, eventually preventing against fracture. The results on humidity sensitive glasses show that both precracking and final fracture steps need to be performed in inert environment to meet the intrinsic KIc value, unless the test is fast enough. © 2021

The resistances of glasses to crack initiation and crack growth are both important parameters for evaluating their mechanical performance. However, it is important to distinguish them as they refer to different mechanical phenomena. In this work, we study the difference in resistance to crack initiation and growth by determining the load required to induce indentation cracking (named crack resistance, CR) and the fracture toughness (KIc), respectively, for six oxide glasses with a wide range of CR values from as low as 0.05 N to above 100 N. These new data as well as existing literature data suggest that there is no systematic relation between CR and KIc, and as such, we conclude that these two terms should not be used interchangeably. We discuss the origin of the lacking relation by considering the competing effects of glass structure, rigidity, and atmospheric humidity on crack initiation and growth.

International audience

International audience; We show that the Single-Edge Precracked Beam (SEPB) test is not only suitable to the determination of the fracture toughness (KIc) of glass, but also offers a unique opportunity to assess the slow crack growth behavior in a single experiment lasting for few minutes. Besides, we found that it is possible to get either a stable or an unstable final fracture regime (pre-cracked specimen) depending on the testing parameters, and that the unstable case is preferable for the estimation of KIc. The “pop-in” precrack was found mostly to close completely once the load was suppressed on the bridge-flexure device. This led to a reopening event on the loading curves. It is noteworthy that all these original observations were made possible thanks to the design of a very stiff testing apparatus (6.7 MN m−1) allowing for a cross-head speed as small as 0.01 μm s−1. Results obtained on four grades of commercially available glasses are compared to those stemming from Vickers indentation cracking and chevron notched experiments. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

Poisson&rsquo, s ratio (&nu, ) defines a material&rsquo, s propensity to laterally expand upon compression, or laterally shrink upon tension for non-auxetic materials. This fundamental metric has traditionally, in some fields, been assumed to be a material-independent constant, but it is clear that it varies with composition across glasses, ceramics, metals, and polymers. The intrinsically elastic metric has also been suggested to control a range of properties, even beyond the linear-elastic regime. Notably, metallic glasses show a striking brittle-to-ductile (BTD) transition for &nu, values above ~0.32. The BTD transition has also been suggested to be valid for oxide glasses, but, unfortunately, direct prediction of Poisson&rsquo, s ratio from chemical composition remains challenging. With the long-term goal to discover such high-&nu, oxide glasses, we here revisit whether previously proposed relationships between Poisson&rsquo, s ratio and liquid fragility (m) and atomic packing density (Cg) hold for oxide glasses, since this would enable m and Cg to be used as surrogates for &nu, To do so, we have performed an extensive literature review and synthesized new oxide glasses within the zinc borate and aluminoborate families that are found to exhibit high Poisson&rsquo, s ratio values up to ~0.34. We are not able to unequivocally confirm the universality of the Novikov-Sokolov correlation between &nu, and m and that between &nu, and Cg for oxide glass-formers, nor for the organic, ionic, chalcogenide, halogenide, or metallic glasses. Despite significant scatter, we do, however, observe an overall increase in &nu, with increasing m and Cg, but it is clear that additional structural details besides m or Cg are needed to predict and understand the composition dependence of Poisson&rsquo, s ratio. Finally, we also infer from literature data that, in addition to high &nu, high Young&rsquo, s modulus is also needed to obtain glasses with high fracture toughness.

Due to an increasing demand for oxide glasses with a better mechanical performance, there is a need to improve our understanding of the composition-structure-mechanical property relations in these brittle materials. At present, some properties such as Young's modulus can to a large extent be predicted based on the chemical composition, while others—in particular fracture-related properties—are typically optimized based on a trial-and-error approach. In this work, we study the mechanical properties of a series of 20 glasses in the quartenary Na 2O–Al 2O 3–B 2O 3–SiO 2 system with fixed soda content, thus accessing different structural domains. Ultrasonic echography is used to determine the elastic moduli and Poisson's ratio, while Vickers indentation is used to determine hardness. Furthermore, the single-edge precracked beam method is used to estimate the fracture toughness (K Ic) for some compositions of interest. The compositional evolutions of Vickers hardness and Young's modulus are in good agreement with those predicted from models based on bond constraint density and strength. Although there is a larger deviation, the overall compositional trend in K Ic can also be predicted by a model based on the strength of the bonds assumed to be involved in the fracture process.