Metallic implant materials possess adequate mechanical properties such as strength, elastic modulus, and ductility for long term support and stability in vivo. Traditional metallic biomaterials, including stainless steels, cobalt-chromium alloys, and titanium and its alloys, have been the gold standards for load-bearing implant materials in hard tissue applications in the past decades. Biodegradable metals including iron, magnesium, and zinc have also emerged as novel biodegradable implant materials with different in vivo degradation rates. However, they do not possess good bioactivity and other biological functions. Bioactive glasses have been widely used as coating materials on the metallic implants to improve their integration with the host tissue and overall biological performances. The present review provides a detailed overview of the benefits and issues of metal alloys when used as biomedical implants and how they are improved by bioactive glass-based coatings for biomedical applications.

Addition of zirconia (ZrO₂) to nuclear waste glasses, even in small amount, significantly affects physical properties such as chemical durability, density, viscosity, and glass transition temperature. Hence ZrO₂ plays an important role in the development of nuclear waste glass compositions. It was found recently that addition of zirconia decreases the initial dissolution rate but increases long-term dissolution by changing the protective properties such as porosity of alteration layers. In this study, the International Simple Glass (ISG) with different amounts of ZrO₂/SiO₂ substitution was simulated using classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and recently developed composition-dependent potential sets. Local structural descriptors such as bond distances, bond angle distributions, and coordination numbers were systematically studied and compared with experimental values. Zr K-edge extended X-ray absorption fine structure spectra were also calculated and compared with experiment to resolve the local coordination environment around Zr. Medium-range structural information (e.g., Q_n distribution, network connectivity, and ring-size distribution) showed that ZrO₂/SiO₂ substitution increases the overall network connectivity and the amount of smaller sized rings, which will decrease the initial dissolution rate by strengthening the glass network and limiting water diffusivity. Finally, diffusion and dynamic properties of the ions were studied and discussed to develop a better understanding of the chemical durability of these glasses.

We have demonstrated an easy chemical oxidation approach toward fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) using arc-synthesized carbon by-products. The as-synthesized CDs possess a strong excitation-independent photoluminescence emission located at ca. 502 nm and strong upconversion fluorescence under long wavelength radiation (from 900 to 550 nm). Importantly, the CD-based device has been investigated and exhibits excellent photoresponse under UV irradiation, highlighting the potential for optoelectronic applications.

The effect of B ₂ O ₃ /SiO ₂ substitution in SrO-containing 55S4.3 bioactive glasses on glass structure and properties, such as ionic diffusion and glass transition temperature, was investigated by combining experiments and molecular dynamics simulations with newly developed potentials.