Architectural glass percent of the world's flat glass is produced by the float glass process invented in the 1950s by Sir Alastair Pilkington of Pilkington Glass, in which molten glass is poured onto one end of a molten tin bath. The glass floats on the tin, and levels out as it spreads along the bath, giving a smooth face to both sides. The glass cools and slowly solidifies as it travels over the molten tin and leaves the tin bath in a continuous ribbon. The glass is then annealed by cooling in an oven called a lehr. The finished product has near-perfect
Glass-to-metal seal interface. The oxygen activity can be increased by diffusion of molecular oxygen through some defects like cracks. Also, reduction of the thermodynamically less stable components in the glass (and releasing the oxygen ions) can increase the oxygen activity at the interface. In other words, the redox reactions are main causes of interaction between glass-metal in the absence of metal oxides on the surface of metal. For achieving a vacuum-tight seal, the seal must not contain bubbles. The bubbles are most commonly created by gases escaping the metal at high temperature; degassing the metal before its sealing is therefore important, especially