Modeling the thermal poling of glasses using molecular dynamics. Part 2: Effects on elastic properties

In this work, thermal poling of ternary oxide glasses, including borosilicates and aluminosilicates, is studied using molecular dynamics. For the glass compositions simulated, results show that thermal poling lowers the Young's modulus of those ternary oxide glasses. Additionally, comparisons between the structures of as-melted and poled glasses, as well as comparisons with their binary as-melted counterparts of the same composition, reveal that the changes in elastic properties can be partially attributed to changes in void size distributions within those glass networks. Overall, this study shows that thermal poling can effectively be used to alter the elastic properties of oxide glasses.