NON-TECHNICAL: Over the next year this project includes an ambitious and balanced mixture of basic and applied research on oxide glasses. Glass has been described as the universal solvent and as such allows itself to be made from many compounds. This research includes the formation of new glasses and the property and structural characterizations that reveal the material's potential usefulness in applications such as batteries, nuclear storage, particle physics detectors, and antibacterial biological uses. Within the field of glass science, the Coe College group has expertise in forming glasses by a number of important novel syntheses. The work is being undertaken with nine Coe College undergraduates and their students through their NSF-REU site. The key broader impact is the development of undergraduate students into professional scientists. The Coe College undergraduate training model includes multiple years of research for each student. It is this sustained research that motivates students to continue to graduate schools at a rate of 75% per year. Over 40% of Coe students are first generation college-bound with 33% of them being from low-income families (with less than 150% of the federally-defined poverty level). There are a number of other broader impacts including outreach to grade schools, extensive leadership, training, and experiences within the glass and physics communities, and involvement of high-school students and teachers in this research.
During 2013, this research includes the study of new oxide glasses prepared by novel pathways including roller quenching, laser levitation, and a solution method of glass formation. The research focuses on the determination of the glass?s physical properties, and relating these properties to the spectroscopically-determined atomic structure. The proposed research activities are divided into four main areas: 1. Preparation and study of important and novel glasses and their uses; 2. Intermediate range order (5 to 10 atom clusters) studies of glasses using 10B nuclear magnetic resonance, neutron scattering, molecular dynamics simulations of atomic structure, and time of flight mass spectroscopy; 3. Preparation of new glasses for calorimeters for future hadron collider experiments at the CERN lab; and 4. Study of a thermodynamic anomaly found at low alkali oxide contents in glasses. Within each activity there are a number of sub-projects consisting of both in-house work and research with a set of domestic and international collaborators. Glass is amongst the most practical of materials and the glasses studied are promising candidates for high energy storage batteries, nuclear waste incorporation, high-energy physics detectors, and biological/medical uses. An important aspect of the work is the substantial high-level research training of a large number of undergraduates (twelve in 2013, including nine supported directly by this project and three from Coe College's REU site). Many of these students are first generation college students.
During 2013 and continuing into 2014 seventeen undergraduate students, a high school student and a high school teacher joined three Coe College faculty in doing much collaborative research on glass, Coe College is a liberal arts college in Cedar Rapids, IA and the PIs have developed an undergraduate research program that serves as a model for the nation. The research is manifold and involves spectroscopy, physical property determination and practical application of a wide variety of oxide glasses. Much of the work is collaborative and, during the current grant program, work has been done with scientists in England, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, and the United States. In several instances there have been student exchanges between our collaborators and us, enriching the research experiences for all students. A trio of research papers has been published from this research with more on the way. The research culminated in several important developments including: the making of new glasses by rapid cooling and laser levitation, the preparation of conductive glass sheets made from new vanadate glasses for high energy physics use, the making of new scintillating glasses for imaging devices, finding spectroscopic evidence that supports the existence of an intermediate range ring structure at the level of about ten atoms in borate glasses, and investigating a newly discovered thermal anomaly found in low alkali content glasses. Broader impacts include the training of students to do publishable research. These 18 students under this grant have joined over 260 students in learning to do publishable research in this program since the early 1980s. One high school teacher did research with us as well and joins about ten previous secondary school teachers in this work. Some of these 19 had the opportunity to travel abroad to either do research or attend conferences and give presentations on their scientific work further enriching their experiences. Also, much science outreach in a variety of settings took place including making glass and discussing its structure and use for elementary, middle school, and high school children.
