Glass

Concrete is a popular building material, enough so that one of its key ingredients – sand – is in short supply. Scientists are thus now exploring the possibility of replacing that sand with glass waste that would otherwise end up in landfills.

Robots and other automated systems have always had trouble visually gauging the 3D shape of transparent objects, like those made of glass. A new system addresses that problem, by using a laser to quickly heat such items.

For some time now, antimicrobial bioactive glass has been put forward for use in applications such as medical implants, hospital surfaces and wound dressings. Now, scientists report they have boosted its bacteria-killing effect by over 100 times.

Researchers at Oxford have developed a new smart window coating that can be tuned on the fly to emit or reflect heat from the Sun in different amounts, reducing the energy costs of heating and cooling by up to a third.

Researchers at Carnegie Science have developed an ultrahard diamond glass. Made entirely of crushed “soccerballs” of carbon, the new material also has high thermal conductivity and could find use in electronics.

As sunlight passes through a building's windows it can cause indoor temperatures to rise, to the point that the structure's air conditioning system has to be used. A new window material, however, blocks incoming heat while staying mostly transparent.

By deploying cutting-edge lasers, scientists at the University of Southampton have achieved a 5D optical data storage breakthrough that offers both incredible density and long-term archiving capabilities.

Material scientists in China experimenting with carbon in its many forms have conjured up a form of glass so hard that it can scratch the surface of a diamond, while also having the ability to act as semiconductor.

Plastic is a lot easier to work with than glass, which is one of the reasons it's used so much more often. That may be about to change, though, thanks to a new process that allows glass to be injection-molded – just like plastic.

Mundane as it may seem, glass is a surprisingly mysterious material. Now scientists at the University of Konstanz have identified a new state of matter called liquid glass, which has some unusual properties.

Although fire-resistant windows do already exist, they contain a carcinogenic gel, plus their production generates a lot of waste. A new technology that works in the same basic fashion, however, is claimed to be much safer and less wasteful.

Of all the materials that can be 3D-printed, glass is still one of the most challenging to work with. Scientists at the ETH Zurich research center are working on changing that, though, with a new and reportedly better glass-printing technique.