Glass Science: fundamentals and applications: nanoporous glasses

• Grant number: 14/02201-6
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: May 20, 2014
• End date: July 03, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Inorganic Chemistry
• Principal Investigator: Sidney José Lima Ribeiro
• Grantee: Sidney José Lima Ribeiro
• Visiting researcher: Charles Austen Angell
• Visiting researcher institution: Arizona State University, Phoenix (ASU), United States
• Host Institution: Instituto de Química (IQ). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The details of the proposed activities, which are spelled out below, can be summarized as follows. The instruction component will be based on a short, high intensity, approximately 12-lecture course on current "GLASS SCIENCE: Fundamentals and Applications", where we intend to cover from basics on glass science up to state of the art in understanding the vitreous state and modern applications. The research component deals with a high-risk, high-payoff project that has, to date, been frustrated at midpoint in its execution at ASU. It deals with the preparation and application of a novel form of glass which is the glassy state equivalent of the wildly popular Metal_Organic Framework (MOF) field of materials research that have been in meteoric development over the past decade. The MOF field was actually initiated in the writer's department at ASU in 1998 by (then) Assistant Prof. Omar Yaghi, and his senior structural chemistry colleague, Regent's Prof. Michael O'Keeffe, who have since become the 2nd and 3rd most cited workers in all of Science in the first decade of the new millenium. Our first attempts to make the glassy equivalent date back to that period but, while there was no difficulty at all in obtaining amorphous forms, no success was had in converting them to bulk glasses. It is only recently that we learned how to make coherent films, using the same building blocks. Unfortunately, the preparation of thick films suffers from the same problems that held up the development of the sol-gel glass class of material, namely, the development of stress cracks as the solvent is removed. The aim of the collaboration is for the writer to become the direct experimentalist on this project under the working assumption that he can do better than his former post doc. Films produced will be characterized by a series of optical studies in which the UNESP team is expert. (AU)