Design and fabrication of vacuum glazing units using a new low temperature hermetic glass edge sealing method

This poster aims at presenting experimental investigations for the fabrication of vacuum glazing using a new low temperature (less than 200C) based hermetic edge sealing method, as shown in Fig. 1. To date two materials indium and solder glass have been used for sealing the edges of the glass sheets in a vacuum glazing. Indium is a low temperature sealing material, melts at 157C, but is very expensive. Solder glass is a high temperature sealing material, melts at around 450C, but has limitation of using low-e coatings and a tempered glass. One of the main hindrances to the manufacture of vacuum glazing at the industrial level is the cost. In this poster presentation, a vacuum glazing system for production at a laboratory scale using a modified evacuation pump-out sealing technique is presented. The vacuum pressure measurements are performed using a combined transducer consists of Micro Pirani and miniaturised hot cathode ionisation gauge. The vacuum pressure of less than 0.046Pa in the cavity of the vacuum glazing samples was recorded. An experimental performance verification of samples can be executed in a hot box calorimeter to measure thermal transmittance performance of the samples.