The external face of glass plays a key role in vision; it provides information on the environment, the visibility of objects through the glass depends essentially on the quality of the surface condition of the external face [1]. In Sahara, North Africa, the external face is exposed to aggressive condition. Lead to a decrease of optical property of solar panels, solar mirrors, or every type of glazings [2].

The protection of glass surface is possible, by deposition of coating; sol gel coating can increase the strength of glass, by the filling of micro flaw, and increase of its K_IC [3], The strength of soda lime glass could be increased with SiO₂, ZrO₂, SiO₂-ZrO₂, AL₂O₃ The coating leads to a remarkable increase in strength which can be attributed to a clamping of the defects. [4, 5, 6]

In the present work, different SiO₂-ZrO₂ coating were deposited on soda lime glass substrate, through sol gel rout, using Methyltriethoxysilane (MTES) and Tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) with a SiO2, and ZrO₂ colloidal suspensions, the deposition of coating lead to important increase in optical transmission from 91.5% to nearly of 94.8%, the refraction index rises with increasing of ZrO₂ proportion and the layers thicknesses, and decreasing in the roughness

References

[1] Nicola pronk, brian fildes, mechael regan, mechael lenn niklas truedsson, ted Olsson, (2001)

Windscreen and safety, munash university accident research centre, Victoria, Australia

[2] Abdelhak Marouani, Nourredine Bouaouadja, Yolanda Castro, Alicia Duran, (2014) Repair and Restoration of the Optical Properties of Sandblasted Glasses By Silica-Based Sol-Gel Coatings, International Journal of Applied Glass Science, DOI:10.1111/ijag.12088, 1-9

[3] s. Pellice a, u. Gilabert b, c. Solier b, y. Castro c, a. Duran, (2004) Mechanical behavior of glass reinforced with SiO₂ hybrid Solgel coatings, Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids 348 172179

[4] Endres k, Mennig M, Amlung M et al(1999). Enhancement of fracture strength of cutted plate glass by the application of sio2 sol-gel coatings. Thin solid films, 351(1/2): 132136.

[5] ZHANG He, ZHOU Jue-Hui, ZHANG Qi-Long, YANG Hui,(2013) mechanical and optical properties of ion-exchange strengthened glass coated With sol-gel derived SiO₂-ZrO₂ film, Journal of Inorganic Materials 28, 785-789

[6] r. Hauk, g.h. frischat, k. Ruppert, (1999) sol-gel preparation of scratch resistant AL₂O₃ coatings on Float glass, in: glastechnische berichte. Glass science and technology, 72, 386