Simulating the effect of glass microstructures on the crystallisation and percolation behaviour of glass-ceramics

Abstract

We report the results of our simulation on the isothermal crystallisation (IC) of oxide glasses with different microstructures (prior phase-separated glasses) using the static Monte Carlo approach as utilised in the site percolation model. Simulation results of IC of phase-separated glasses in terms of crystal nucleation and growth are found to be in agreement with experimental observations. We then simulate the critical behaviour of all the systems modelled in this study, near their percolation thresholds. The estimated values of different critical exponents at and near the percolation thresholds of different glass-ceramic systems are reported. We also test the validity of the scaling hypothesis for percolation phase transitions for the systems considered. While accomplishing this, we have noted that one of the model systems does not conform to the scaling hypothesis.