For more than 100 years, borosilicate glass has been the preferred material for pharmaceutical packaging all around the world. With continuous development of modern medicine industry, new drugs emerge one after another, so that the safety problem of borosilicate glass in the process of liquid medicine packaging and storage becomes increasingly prominent. In the process of long-term contact with liquid medicines, especially alkaline ones, there are risks of peeling, particulate matter generation, drug failure and so on. Therefore, chemical stability of borosilicate glass, especially alkali resistance, needs to be further improved.The global spread of COVID-19 has further accelerated the development and production of high-quality borosilicate glass and new medical packaging glass in the world. Five aspects were systematically summarized in this article, including (Ⅰ) classification of pharmaceutical packaging glass circulating in the market, (Ⅱ) application fields and representative compositions of various commercial glass, (Ⅲ) key preparation processes of high quality borosilicate glass, (Ⅳ) correlations between composition,structure and property, (Ⅴ) composition and properties of novel aluminum silicate pharmaceutical packaging glasses.

Lead-free low melting glasses, ZnO-CuO-Bi₂O₃-B₂O₃-SiO₂ system, with fixed contents of 15 mol% CuO and 20 mol% Bi₂O₃, were prepared by using melt cooling method. Structure and thermal properties of the glasses were studied by using X-ray diffractometer (XRD), infrared spectrometer (FIT-IR), thermal dilatometer and differential thermal analyzer (DTA). Chemical durability of the glasses was studied by using dissolution rate method. Wettability of glasses on substrate was tested by using button sintering experiment. It is found that alkaline resistance of the glass solders is lower than that of plate glass and the water resistance is comparable with that of plate glass. The sealing temperatures are T_s=445–490 ℃, while the average thermal expansion coefficient from room temperature to 300 ℃ is in the range of (65–82)×10^-7 ℃^-1. At sealing temperature, the glass solders have good wettability on plate glass or alumina substrate. They are not crystallized even sintered at the sealing temperature for 30 min. The solder glasses are suitable for sealing plate glass, alumina and other inorganic non-metallic materials.