Glass ceramics: state-of-the-art

Recent development and research trends in three important areas are discussed. These are: (1) developments in well established low thermal expansion glass ceramics, (2) diverse approaches to create glass ceramics with high fracture toughness and (3) sintered glass ceramics. Developments are discussed in the light that glass ceramics are more expensive than glasses and therefore will he commercially successful only when the benefit from a glass ceramic component is sufficiently high. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.