I am an independent consultant looking at failures of sapphire glass tubes. Micro cracking have been experienced in sapphire tubes during the plasma etch process. Do you have any technical literature on this failure mechanism? I'm touching base with many sapphire tube suppliers. I'm not looking to point the fingure an anyone. I'm just collecting information and comming up to speed on this type of failure.

Unfortunately, I have not any literatute on failure mechanism in sapphire tubes. I think this question connected with thermoelastisity of the sapphire crystals. Prof. V.L. Indenbom (Institute of Crystallography Academy of Sciences of USSR) have studied the same problems. Please, find him scientific works at 60-70 years in journal “Crystallography” and other. And I recommend to read the book “Ruby and Sapphire” “Nauka” about 1970. All authors are from Institute of Crystallography. It is all what I can say you.

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Hi, I work in a lab and we will be working with sapphire at low temperatures. Our apparatus will be going under different stresses and I was wondering what type of stresses and strain it can take at temperatures down less than 4K. I have been looking for elastic moduli figures, but I can't find any values for sapphire less than room temperature. As a company that deals with sapphire for optics and mechanical purposes, I was wondering if you had any information?
I am an independent consultant looking at failures of sapphire glass tubes. Micro cracking have been experienced in sapphire tubes during the plasma etch process. Do you have any technical literature on this failure mechanism? I'm touching base with many sapphire tube suppliers. I'm not looking to point the fingure an anyone. I'm just collecting information and comming up to speed on this type of failure.
However, when I investigated thermal expansion and contraction issues, a couple sapphire fabricators stated that they can heat the glass up to red hot and drop it in water without it cracking. They also mentioned another failure mode having to do with surface etching and surface fractures from the plasma. They have a very technical name for it and I can't remember what it was called. Do you have anything idea of this surface etching phenomena?

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