Structural similarity of glasses and melts relevant to petrological processes

High-temperature Ramun spectroscopic investigations of melts in the systems GeO₂. Na₂O-SiO₂ and Na₂O-Al₂O₃-SiO₂ demonstrate the close structural relationships between melts and glasses. No coordination changes with temperature and no new anionic species have been observed in the melt relative to those in the glass. The relative concentration of different anionic units changes only slightly in the temperature range 100–1350 C. With increasing temperature, compositions with three-dimensionally connected structural units exhibit an intensity increase of a band characteristic of a defect in the network structure, but the network still remains essentially intact.