Researchers discover a surprising property of glass surfaces

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a new technique to study the surface of different types of glass. Using this technique, they discovered a surprising property of the top layer of glasses, which could pave the way to developing better glass materials.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-04-property-glass-surfaces.html#jCp

Tau.Neutrino said:

Researchers discover a surprising property of glass surfaces

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a new technique to study the surface of different types of glass. Using this technique, they discovered a surprising property of the top layer of glasses, which could pave the way to developing better glass materials.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-04-property-glass-surfaces.html#jCp

To summarise. Although glass is a solid, the top few nanometres behave like a viscous liquid. This allows the meniscus of glass to weld itself to nanoparticles that land on its surface over a period of about two minutes. This was tested and confirmed by placing a virus on a glass surface.