| Abstract: | Glass, although known for thousands years, has been heavily investigated in the past few years. This was mainly caused by the demand on advanced materials for optics and optoelectronics. Here, active laser glasses and glasses for laser optics especially for the deep W-range played an important part. Other important developments were glass fibres for various wavelengths and optoelectronic devices, such as waveguides. Additionally, new glass ceramics have focused a great deal of interest. Besides those glass ceramics possessing extremely low thermal expansion, glass ceramics for biomedical applications, e.g. as material for human bone replacement as well as oriented glassceramics have intensively been studied. |
