Vol. 33, Issue 1, pp. 75-81 (2003)
Keywords
sol-gel method, aerogels, silica, nitridation, molecular dynamics simulations
Abstract
Nitrided silica aerogel was sintered at 1600 °C in vacuum or nitrogen atmosphere and the effect of densification was compared with that observed in silica aerogel. It has been shown that homogeneous oxynitride glasses containing 8.4–13 wt% can be obtained by densification of nitrided aerogels. The densification process of nitrided aerogels was simulated by computer modeling using classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. MD simulations have shown that densification process proceeds in a similar way as in the experiment. In addition, the simulations indicate that oxynitride glasses can be obtained by densification of Si–O–N system.