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SPP 1594:  Topological Engineering of Ultra-Strong Glasses

Subject Area Materials Science and Engineering
Term from 2012 to 2020
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 198574154
 
Final Report Year 2021

Final Report Abstract

The primary target of PP 1594 was the “topological engineering” of glasses with improved mechanical performance. While glasses – in terms of their intrinsic (theoretical) properties – are among the strongest man-made materials which can be produced on large scale, in practical terms, real-world applications do usually not meet up to this promise. It is common knowledge that this is due to stress-amplification at microscopic defects: in the presence of such defects, the mechanical stress acting locally can be orders of magnitude higher than the macroscopic (externally applied) stress. When – such as in brittle glasses – the material cannot respond by local plastic deformation, stresses cannot be dissipated and, thus, fracture occurs already at low external load. Understanding local deformation mechanisms and their tailoring through glass chemical composition holds the key to this problem. The strategic focus of PP 1594, therefore, was on bulk properties which are at the origin of mechanical behaviour, and their dependence on glass structure on intermediate length scale (denoted topology). Identification of fundamental structural constraints and their engineering towards ultrahigh toughness was identified as the primary breakthrough of the field, and therefore became the central theme of PP 1594. It was anticipated that significant synergy can be created through the joint treatment of the two archetype classes of glass, i.e., inorganic oxide glasses which are primarily (structurally) determined by directional bonding, and metallic glasses which are primarily determined by packing. In this regard, reaching a level of consensus and synergistic operation were in the focus of the first funding period, while the second period was intended to focus on specific technical advances. In total, 11 research projects were conducted (7 of which were running over two funding periods), whereby each project typically involved 2-3 principal investigators. At the time this report is written, a diverse group of 21 young researchers from the program were awarded their doctoral degree based on research conducted in PP 1594. Research results have been reported in more than 90 peer-reviewed publications. Two international conferences were organized and conducted as parts of PP 1594, with high-level attendance and a broad range of spin-off and follow-up opportunities for global collaboration.

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