y with a good technology, SO we provided seed money to establish the THE FUTURE IS FIBER-OPTICAL TECHNOLOGIES Figure 4-1 REAL Glass (Rare Earth Aluminum oxide). technology's feasibility. Right now, we can say the feasibility is clear, and they're one step closer to full-scale manufacturability," he says. CRI originally developed the glasses with funding from NASA. The research used containerless processing techniques, including a specialized research facility-the Electrostatic Levitator-at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. With the NASA device, the researchers levitated the materials using static electricity and then heated the substances to extremely high temperatures. In that process, the materials were completely protected against contact with a surrounding container or other sources of contamination. "The research that led to the development of REAL Glass concerned the nature and properties of 'fragile' liquids, substances that are very sensitive to temperature and have a viscosity [or resistance to flow] that can change rapidly when the temperature drops," says Richard Weber, the CRI principal investi- gator on the project. REAL Glass, like many other glasses, is made from a supercooled liquid. This means that the liquid cooled quickly enough to prevent its atoms from organizing and forming a crystal structure. At lower temperatures, such as room temperature, the atoms are "fixed" in this jumbled, glassy state. In REAL Glass, the glass-making process also provides a mechanism for incorporating NEW OPTICAL MATERIALS rare-earth elements in a uniform way. This quality makes REAL Glass particularly attractive for laser applications. After CRI scientists spent several years on fundamental research into fragile liquids, NSF provided funds to develop both patented glasses and pro- prietary manufacturing processes for combining the glass components in com- mercial quantities and at a much lower cost than for levitation melting. Using high-temperature melting and forming operations, CRI is