Formation of a unique glass by spark plasma sintering of a zeolite

A simple approach, order-disorder transition (ODT), has been developed to synthesize a novel glass using ZSM-5 as starting materials. In this process, the ZSM-5 powders were pressed uniaxially in a graphite die and rapidly sintered using spark plasma sintering (SPS). High-resolution transmission electron microscopic images revealed that a few crystalline zeolite fragments were still preserved locally inside the SPS consolidated sample. Vickers microhardness and fracture toughness of this as-prepared transparent glass sample at room temperature reaches 7.3 +/- 0.2 GPa and 2.0 +/- 0.3MPa center dot m(1/2) respectively. It is very interesting that these novel bulk transparent glasses exhibit ultraviolet photoluminescence (PL) properties at about similar to 360 nm.