Keynote: glasses, glazes and glass- ceramics at the starting of the Millenium

摘要

The starting of Millenium is an excellent opportunity for reviewing the actual state of research and development of more conventional inorganic and non metallic glassy materials, viz: glasses, glazes and glass- ceramics. Though a general view is going to be obtained from the communications of this Ecers Congress, here is given a general review of the state of the art from the research activities and the actual applications of such type of materials, making more emphasis in the own experience of author in glass and glass- ceramics research. The general trend has been in the last years to widen the applications of glasses from more traditional applications to more sophisticated and high technologic uses, opening the compositional systems in the last decades to the non- oxide glasses. Advances in glass- ceramics after the first patents in the 50' decade has been looking for higher performances in mechanical and thermal properties, as well a huge advance in the theoretical basis on nucleation and growth phenomena for controlled crystallization. After reviewing briefly the main results and trends of the leader World research groups in this field, showed in the last recently celebrated international symposiums on crystallization in glasses and the TC7 Group of the ICG, our last research in glasses, glazes and glass- ceramics from industrial wastes as the vitrification/ controlled devitrification processing are showed due to nowadays great interest in the European Union at this starting point of this Millenium for development of new environmental protection and recycling technologies.