Silica glass formation process
AssigneeSeiko Epson Corporation
InventorsMotoyuki Toki, Sadao Kanbe, Satoru Miyashita, Tetsuhiko Takeuchi
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Abstract
In a forming a silica glass at low temperature, a fumed silica is added to a hydrolyzed solution of a metal alcoxide. 0.2-5 mol of fumed silica is added to 1 mol of metal alcoxide. Being uniformly dispersed, the solution is gelled and dried to be dry gel and then sintered to be non-porous. This process allows a practically large sized silica glass to be materialized which has been impossible by the previous sol-gel technology. In addition, a further large silica glass can be prepared by adjusting pH value to 3-6 with addition of base in the sol solution.
Claims21
A process for forming a monolithic silica glass article, comprising:
- hydrolyzing a silicon alkoxide in solution to form a hydrolyzed solution;
- adding an effective amount of fumed silica for preventing cracking during the process, which would provide cracks in the glass article, to the hydrolyzed solution to form a sol solution;
- gelling the sol solution to form a gel;
- drying the gel to form a dry gel;
- and
- sintering the dry gel at a temperature effective to form a glass thereby to form a large monolithic silica glass article without said cracking during the process.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.