Chemical Tempering of Soda Lime Silicate Glass by Electric Field Assisted Techniques

Chemical strengthening of glass is a process that toughens the surface of glass by exchange of alkali ions at temperatures below the glass- transition temperature where the replacement of small alkali ions in the glass with larger potassium ions from the molten salt occurs which results in creation of a thin layer of high compression stress on the surface of glass & a layer of a tension in the center. Effective chemical strengthening of glass has restricted by diverse technological limitations such as glass composition, salts impurities, temperature and time. Therefore, in this manuscript, the shortcomings of the current state of the art technologies have analyzed and an Electric Field-assisted glass strengthening alternative has presented and tested. EF-IE shortens the processing time drastically and improves the efficiency forming exchanged layer as deep as and in some cases, more than the conventional strengthening process and enhances the glass strength and makes the glass more failure resistant in some cases. Ion exchange in different liquid phase compositions & its factors on the final strength of SLS glasses also investigated. The obtained values from the characterization were compared to results obtained from experiments with the current state of the art process and in some cases show a significant increase in strength of the glass. Possible reasons for the differences are also discussed.