Light Scattering in Transparent Glass Ceramics

TL;DR

This paper models light scattering in transparent glass ceramics with nanocrystalline structures, deriving a relationship between turbidity, wavevector, and crystal size to inform the design of low-scattering optical materials.

Contribution

It introduces a phase-separated structure model to compute light scattering, revealing a specific k^8 R^7 dependence for turbidity in glass ceramics.

Findings

Turbidity scales with the eighth power of the wavevector.

Turbidity scales with the seventh power of crystal radius.

Model aids in designing transparent glass ceramics with minimal scattering.

Abstract

Transparent glass ceramic materials, with microstructures comprised of dispersed nanocrystallites in a residual glass matrix, offer the prospect of nonlinear optical properties. However, good transparency requires low optical scattering and low atomic absorption. The attenuation of light due to scattering (turbidity) will depend upon the difference in refractive index of the two phases and the size and distribution of crystals in the glass. Here, we model the glass ceramic as a late-stage phase-separated structure, and compute scattering in this model. We find that the turbidity follows a k^8 R^7 relationship, where k is the wavevector of light in the glass ceramic and R is the average radius of the crystals in the glass.