Monday, July 11, 2005Volume 5, Issue 4
Industry Challenges Scientists to Find New Functionality in Glasses
Representative from the glass industry challenged a gathering of more than 100 international glass scientists to find innovative ways of making glass stronger, cheaper, and more environmentally green at a glass conference held at Penn State in June, 2005. The 1st International Materials Institute Workshop on New Functionality in Glasses brought scientists from 12 countries to the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center to discuss their research in areas as diverse as the use of ultra fast lasers to write 3-dimensional patterns inside glass to the development of hydrogen-filled hollow glass microspheres to shield astronauts from high-energy particle radiation on long duration spaceflights.
Glass manufacturing in the U.S. employs 150,000 skilled workers and produces $22 billion worth of product annually. More than just the common material used in buildings and automobiles, glass functions in biotechnology to help build and repair bone and tissue, in DNA sequencing and in high-power lasers, as components in high performance fuel cells, as optical fiber for telecommunications, even for the long-term storage of nuclear waste. Glass is environmentally friendly, in both its manufacture and its near total recyclability, is exceptionally durable chemically, and has unique optical properties.
The workshop was funded by the National Science Foundation and organized by Penn State's Carlo Pantano and Lehigh University's Himanshu Jain as part of the 17th University Conference on Glass Science, a conference held every two years on a rotating basis among four major glass research institutes located in the U.S. The challenge issued to the participants was to find opportunities to translate basic science research into new applications for glass.
A panel of industry experts was on hand to give their perspectives on glass research and industry needs. Sam Conzone, director of R&D at Schott Nexterion's American division, told the scientists that research should quit focusing on small advances and little devices if they want to help glass regain the preeminence glass has lost to other materials, such as plastics and composites. He advised university scientists to work with good consultants to create goals that are four five or six years out.
Mark Taylor, director of exploratory markets and technologies for Corning Incorporated, told the audience that industry has trouble working with academia. "Intellectual property concerns make it difficult for industry to carry on a conversation with university researchers. You need to set up a liaison office to make it easier, modeled something like the one at MIT. It's difficult to even find out who to talk to at a big university," he said.
PPG Industries' Mehran Arbab, associate director of flat glass, laid out the constraints facing the glass industry, which include high-cost fixed assets such as plants and equipment, energy intensive processes, and price-sensitive core customers, including auto, aircraft, builders, and appliance makers. "A manufacturer like Boeing won't pay for small changes. But there are real opportunities for truly differentiated products that set Boeing apart from Airbus." What are the common strategic interests among government, industry and academia? "Processes that use less energy, materials that are more efficient, glass that weighs less," he said. Among the areas of research his company is interested in are bioactive surfaces, glass for safety and security, and active windows that control light with little energy use.
Saint-Gobain Recherche, a French company with 30 billion Euros in annual sales, is interested in glass processes with low melting temperatures to save energy, nanoglasses, and textured glass that controls how light enters a room, according to Yannick Lefrere, head of glass formulations for the 300-year-old company. "Flat glass is our largest division of building materials, and coatings on glass is our main research area. We are looking for "green" manufacturing techniques, to reduce toxicity in the environment."
What should academia be doing?
The semiconductor industry is looking for glasses that can make smaller, faster, cheaper semiconductors based on decreasing the gate delay, a problem that plagues high-speed circuits. The transition to replace silicon dioxide, the current chip material, will take a minimum of ten years, according to Andreas Knorr of Sematech, a consortium of semiconductor manufacturers. Another 2 or 3 generations of life can be gained from stacking silicon chips, but by 2020, the limits of silicon chips will be reached and a new material will have to take their place. "We want to stay with the material we have because we understand the problem," he said. "New material research isn't mature enough yet. It takes 10 years to put a new material into place," he said.
"What should academia be doing?" Dr. Jain asked the panelists.
"We don't have enough researchers," Knorr responded. "Glass industry scientists are aging and we need more young people. Another problem is that other universities outside the U.S. are easier to deal with. With government and industry providing less money to universities, marketing becomes more and more important. But you must have good products to market. Plus, if you don't manufacture in the United States, the research money will go overseas, too."
The conference featured remarks by Carmen Huber of the National Science Foundation. The NSF funds six International Materials Institutes to serve as centers of attraction for scientists and engineers from around the world. The IMI for New Functionality in Glass is the most recent center, first announced in December 2003. Each of the IMIs is funded at $600,000 to $700,000 a year - a level, Huber says, that is not likely to grow for the next several years due to NSF budget constraints.
The Proceedings of this 17th University Conference on Glass Science will be published in a special volume of the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids.
