Glass products come in a wide variety, and can be categorized into several types based on material, purpose, and processing technology. According to material, common types include ordinary glass, tempered glass, laminated glass, quartz glass, and borosilicate glass. Ordinary glass is mainly composed of silicates, has generally low transparency, and poor temperature resistance (usually not exceeding 300℃). It is mostly used for everyday utensils such as glass cups, bowls, and windows. Tempered glass is made from ordinary glass through special heat treatment, making it 3-5 times stronger than ordinary glass. When broken, it shatters into small, blunt-edged pieces, offering high safety. It is widely used in building curtain walls, car windows, and appliance panels (such as refrigerator and microwave door glass).
Laminated glass consists of two or more layers of glass sandwiched with one or more layers of organic polymer interlayer. Even if the glass breaks, the fragments will be held together by the interlayer, preventing them from detaching and causing injury. It offers excellent safety, sound insulation, and heat insulation properties, and is commonly used in high-rise building doors and windows, bulletproof glass, bank counter glass, and other applications requiring high security. Quartz glass, as mentioned earlier, features high purity, high temperature resistance, and good light transmission. Besides quartz domes and cylindrical mirrors, it is also used in optical instrument lenses and semiconductor wafer carriers. Borosilicate glass (also known as high-temperature resistant glass) has a low coefficient of thermal expansion, strong temperature resistance (withstanding temperatures of 500℃-600℃), and good chemical stability. It is commonly used in laboratory beakers, test tubes, solar collectors, and high-temperature lamp covers.
Based on their uses, glass products can also be divided into architectural glass (such as float glass and insulated glass), daily-use glass (such as tableware and handicrafts), optical glass (such as eyeglass lenses and microscope lenses), and electronic glass (such as mobile phone screen glass and integrated circuit substrate glass). Different types of glass products have different focuses in terms of performance and application scenarios, meeting diverse needs.