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Glass shaping made easy.

Structuring of glass is challenging and usually requires high temperatures to shape a glass melt or aggressive chemicals for etching of microstructures. Glassomer is a silica nanocomposite which comes as a liquid or a solid. As a liquid Glassomer (e.g. Glassomer L50) can be structured by room temperature replication or stereolithography 3D printing. As a solid Glassomer can be structured using classical subtractive structuring technologies like drilling, milling, lathing or simply carving with a knife. It can further be structured using thermal polymer molding technologies like nanoimprinting, thermoforming or high-throughput roll-to-roll replication. A final heat treatment turns the polymeric nanocomposites into high quality fused silica glass. The conversion takes place at 1300°C below the temperature for handling of silica melts (~2000 °C) and thus saves a considerable amount of energy.

High Quality Fused Silica Glass.

The sintered Glassomer parts are chemically and physically indistinguishable from commercial fused silica glass. They show the same high optical transparancy in the UV, visible and infrared region combined with the high thermal and chemical stabililty as well as the same mechanical strength and hardness of commercial fused silica glass. Glassomer allows for the first time to structure high quality fused silica glass using polymer processing technologies with resolutions of a few micrometers and surface roughnesses of a few nanometers fully compatible with the demands of optics and photonics.