Materials for Design

Borosilicate (aka Pyrex^®)

Borosilicate is more a utility than a luxury type of glass. Although lacking the sparkle of soda-lime or crystal glass, this technical glass has still made a huge and unparalleled contribution to technology and our lives over the last 100 years. As the name implies, borosilicate glasses, the third major glass group, are composed mainly of silica (70–80 per cent) and boric oxide (7–13 per cent) with smaller amounts of the alkalis (sodium and potassium oxides) and aluminium oxide. The reason it is such an important glass is because of two of its main attributes, which are its high chemical resistance and its ability to withstand large changes in temperature.

Invented by Otto Schott, who went on to found Schott Glass, one ...