British Crystallographic Association Industrial Group

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Industrial Group of the BCA

Industrial Applications of Crystallography

The Glass Industry

The uses of XRD in the glass industry are diverse and include:

Identification of particles which cause tiny faults in bulk glass,
Routine identification of unknowns,
Corrosion products,
Phase quantification in refractory blocks,
Measurements of coatings for texture, crystallite size and crystallinity
Specular reflectivity to give thickness, density and roughness of layers.

Diffraction gave us our basic understanding of the structure of glass

Examples

A diffraction scan of a 3000A coating on a glass substrate. Thin film optics and a 1.5 degree glancing angle have removed the amorphous peak from the glass given with conventional optics. The preferred orientation is generated during the deposition and growth of this on-line coating.

$Textured coating diffractogram$

The refection of X-rays from the surface of a coating stack at grazing incidence angles obeys fundamental physical laws and can be easily modelled to give thickness, density and roughness information on the individual layers. The diagram shows how the addition of each layer in a two layer stack modifies the reflection of a copper X-ray beam from that given by the glass substrate.

Specular Reflection Diagram

Last updated 26 August 2002