Silicate glass fracture surface energy calculated from crystal structure and bond-energy data

We present a novel method to predict the fracture surface energy, gamma, of isochemically crystallizing silicate glasses using readily available crystallographic structure data of their crystalline counterpart and tabled diatomic chemical bond energies, D-0. The method assumes that gamma equals the fracture surface energy of the most likely cleavage plane of the crystal. Calculated values were in excellent agreement with those calculated from glass density, network connectivity and D-0 data in earlier work. This finding demonstrates a remarkable equivalence between crystal cleavage planes and glass fracture surfaces.