A New Kind of Glass

Leaded crystal and common glass may look similar, but the crystal is made of a rigid scaffolding of atoms, while the glass is a disordered atomic slurry.

Researchers have developed a method for crafting some of the most stable glasses ever formed--materials that are strong and durable like crystal and yet free of the confining properties of an ordered atomic skeleton. They hope the new method will enable drug manufacturers to take advantage of chemicals that had been too insoluble as crystals and too unstable as glasses.

The findings, announce a method to deposit glass materials layer by layer as a vapor onto a surface with an ideal temperature for yielding stable glasses, an advancement over earlier vapor deposition efforts and different from the more traditional practice of quenching molten material.

The latest wonder drugs work only if they arrive in the body where they are needed and at the right concentration at the right time. Some potential pharmaceuticals are hindered by being too crystalline--not dissolving quickly enough, or at all, in the body--or too glassy, breaking down too quickly or in uncontrollable ways.

---LiveScience Staff

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Credit: University of Wisconsin-Madison