Cover Image, Volume 10, Issue 3

Abstract

Cover Photograph: Top: The continuous stretching of a glass ribbon to 0.12 mm on the top of a molten tin bath is essentially a process of accurately controlling and maintaining a dynamic equilibrium of a large‐scale open system, where not only thermal energy is exchanged but also the ribbon travels with increasing speed. At any given point in the tin bath, the speed of the moving ribbon must be maintained constant. Through pilot float plant experiments, optimal technical parameters were established for continuous manufacturing of ultrathin glass including distributions of temperature/viscosity, the glass ribbon traveling speed, and the variation of the thickness along the longitudinal direction of the tin bath. Bottom: Atomic force microscope images for 0.12 mm float glass showing (a) the top surface, (b) the bottom surface (in contact with the molten tin), and (c) the enlarged/localized roughness on the bottom surface. The analysis shows that the top surface had a root mean square (RMS) roughness value of 1.81 nm and the bottom surface 3.57 nm. Measured under identical conditions, the surface electric resistivity for the bottom and top surface were respectively 1.885×1014 Ω·m and 1.296×1015 Ω·m. Bechgaard et al. DOI: 10.1111/ijag.13105. image