Influence of thermal history on the structure and properties of silicate glasses

We studied a set of float glass samples prepared with different fictive temperatures by previous annealing around the glass transition temperature. We compared the results to previous measurements on a series of amorphous silica samples, also prepared with different fictive temperatures. We showed that the modifications on the structure at a local scale are very small, the changes of physical properties are moderate but the changes on density fluctuations at a nanometer scale are rather large: 12% and 20% in float glass and silica, for relative changes of fictive temperature equal to 13% and 25% respectively. Local order and mechanical properties of silica vary in the opposite way compared to float glass (anomalous behavior) but the density fluctuations in both glasses increase with temperature and fictive temperature.