What are Glass-Ceramics?
The scientific field of glass-ceramics was first pioneered in the 1950s and quickly led to the introduction of Corning Ware in 1958. Corning Ware, Centura and Suprema are examples of glass-ceramics. To put it briefly, they are materials that are initially glass in structure, but after heat treatment they become a ceramic. For example, an item such as a casserole is first formed from melted glass, then it is re-heated and cooled under controlled conditions. It is the heat treatment which grows crystals within the glass turning it into a ceramic which vastly improves the strength of the item. The transformation from glass to ceramic is visible in the material’s atomic structure. Glass has an amorphous structure, meaning that its atoms are certainly bound, but in irregular patterns. In contrast, the atoms of a ceramic are bound in very regular patterns, or crystals; it has a crystalline structure. The heat treatment of the glass article is not the only thing required to encourage the crys
