Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
NMR spectroscopy is beginning to provide quantitative information on short-and medium-range structure in silicate glasses and liquids, and onmolecular-scale dynamics in the liquids. Data on coordination numbers,second and higher neighbor connectivities, and larger scale heterogeneities,as determined by NMR at ambient and high temperatures, are potentially veryuseful in models of nucleation and growth of immiscible liquid andcrystalline phases. New techniques such as dynamic angle spinning (DAS),high temperature magic angle spinning (MAS) are especially promising.Detailed studies of paramagnetic nuclear spin relaxation can characterizecompositional heterogeneity in glasses to distance scales of at leastseveral nanometers.