Back Cover: Phys. Status Solidi C 12/2012

Containerless processing is a suitable technique for vitrification of materials with low glass‐forming ability, because it suppresses inhomogeneous nucleation from the container wall and promotes deep undercooling in molten materials. Therefore, materials even without a network former oxide can be vitrified using containerless processing. In their paper on pp. 2424–2427, Atsunobu Masuno et al. report the glass formation in the LaO 3/2 –TiO 2 –MO x ternary system (M = Ga, Y, Gd, Hf, W, Zn, Ge, Nb, Ta, Bi, and Ba) by an aerodynamic levitation furnace. These TiO 2 ‐based glasses exhibit a high refractive index around 2.3 and low wavelength dispersion with a large Abbe number over 20. It was found that the substitution of GdO 3/2 for LaO 3/2 components was most effective for the increase of the Abbe number with keeping a high refractive index. These results are useful for glass composition design toward future innovative optical applications in the visible region. The illustration shows schematically an aerodynamic levitation furnace, surrounded by a series of pictures of the cooling and glass formation process of the levitated titanate melt.