By glass, we normally mean an "oxide glass" and for most of our day-to-day applications, we mean silicate glasses - mainly a variety of soda-lime-silica glasses for different usages, such as containers for home and industrial applications, float glass for building construction, and other applications. However, there are various other types of non-silicate glasses (borates, borophosphates, alumino phosphates, boro-aluminophosphates etc) for many types of applications requiring special properties. Among all these glasses encompassing a wider composition base, the borosilicate glasses stand apart in terms of an impressive list of applications at home as well as in the scientific and industrial fields. This article provides a description of borosilicate glass with a flavour of their various usages.
