Insights into glass formation and glass transition in supercooled liquids, by study of related phenomena in crystals

Abstract

We divide glass and viscous liquid sciences into two major research areas, the first dealing with how to avoid crystals and so access the viscous liquid state, and the second dealing with how liquids behave when no crystals form. We review some current efforts to elucidate each area, looking at strategies for vitrification of monatomic metals in the first, and the origin of the property fragility in the second. Essential here is the non- trivial behavior of the glassformer thermodynamics. We explore the findings on nonexponential relaxationand dynamic heterogeneities in viscous liquids, emphasizing the way in which direct excitation of the configurational modes has helped differentiate configurational from nonconfigurational contributions to the excess heat capacity. We then propose a scheme for understanding the relation between inorganic network and non-network glassformers which includes the anomalous case of water as an intermediate. In a final section we examine the additional insights to be gained by study of the ergodicity-breaking, glass-like, transitions that occur in disordering crystals. Here we highlight systems in which the background thermodynamics is understood because the ergodic behavior is a lambda transition. Water and the classical network glassformers appear to be attenuated versions of these.

arXiv comment20 pages, 8 figures, MS of opening talk to Brazilian glass physics conference: introduces links to isosymmetric transitions in crystals, glass transitions in systems with lambda transitions

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• The role of local structure in dynamical arrest
• A locally preferred structure characterises all dynamical regimes of a supercooled liquid
• Glass transition with decreasing correlation length during cooling of Fe50Co50 superlattice and strong liquids
• Crystallization of the Lewis-Wahnström ortho-terphenyl model
• Macroscopic Length Correlations in Non-Equilibrium Systems and Their Possible Realizatons
• How do hydrogen bonds break in supercooled water?: Detecting pathways not going through the saddle point of two-dimensional potential of mean force
• Potential-tuning molecular dynamics studies of fusion, and the question of ideal glassformers: (I) The Gay-Berne model
• Prigogine-Defay ratio of glassy freezing scales with liquid fragility