The utilization of rare earth tailing for the production of glass–ceramics

A new glass–ceramic was synthesized by adding rare earth tailing in traditional glass. The glass transition temperature, glass crystallization temperature, activation energy of crystal growth and the microstructures of the glass–ceramics were investigated by DSC, XRD and SEM. The results show that the crystallization peak of the glass–ceramics becomes sharper and shifts to lower temperature with increasing tailing content. Additionally, the addition of the tailing leads to a clear decrease of the size of precipitated crystals, and the crystal sizes of the sample containing 50% tailing are in a range of 30–70 nm. The activation energy of the crystal growth of the glass–ceramics declines with rising tailing percent. And the activation energies of the samples with tailing percents of 30, 50 and 70 wt.% are 310, 439 and 376 kJ mol−1, respectively. The Avrami constants of these samples were calculated as 2.3, 3.2 and 3.3, which indicate two-dimensional growth and bulk crystallization. The major crystalline phases were identified as anorthite and diopside.