Calculation of physical properties of glass via the phase diagram approach

Glass has become an indispensable and essential material with broad applications ranging from household appliances to building materials, photovoltaic cells, optical communications, and others. However, one of the major stumbling blocks to its optimal use is that the structure-property relationship has not been thoroughly characterized in the past few decades. In this paper, we present a method to predict the physical properties, including the density, refractive index, thermal expansion coefficient, elastic modulus and shear modulus, of a series of oxide and non-oxide glass systems via the phase diagram approach. The good agreement of the predicted values with experimental data shows that the phase diagram approach is useful and widely applicable for forecasting a variety of physical properties of glasses. Furthermore, compositions in the borate, germanate, and chalcogenide glass systems with anomalistic properties are carefully investigated and analyzed. Our results demonstrate that the phase diagram approach is an effective method for investigating the physical properties of glass, guiding the theoretical research and practical applications.