Confinement as a tool to probe amorphous order

Abstract

We study the effect of confinement on glassy liquids using Random First Order Transition theory as framework. We show that the characteristic length-scale above which confinement effects become negligible is related to the point-to-set length-scale introduced to measure the spatial extent of amorphous order in super-cooled liquids. By confining below this characteristic size, the system becomes a glass. Eventually, for very small sizes, the effect of the boundary is so strong that any collective glassy behavior is wiped out. We clarify similarities and differences between the physical behaviors induced by confinement and by pinning particles outside a spherical cavity (the protocol introduced to measure the point-to-set length). Finally, we discuss possible numerical and experimental tests of our predictions.

5 pages, 3 figures and EPAPS (4 pages, 1 figure)

References in corpus (7)

• Growing length and time scales in glass forming liquids
• Rigorous Inequalities between Length and Time Scales in Glassy Systems
• Mosaic multi-state scenario vs. one-state description of supercooled liquids
• Finite size effects in the dynamics of glass-forming liquids
• Analytic determination of dynamical and mosaic length scales in a Kac glass model
• Decorrelation of the static and dynamic length scales in hard-sphere glass-formers
• Mosaic length and finite interaction-range effects in a one dimensional random energy model

Cited by in corpus (13)

• An introduction to the colloidal glass transition
• Predicting how nanoconfinement changes the relaxation time of a supercooled liquid
• Theory of the Structural Glass Transition: A Pedagogical Review
• Boundary mobility controls glassiness of confined colloidal liquids
• Efficient measurement of point-to-set correlations and overlap fluctuations in glass-forming liquids
• Structures and dynamics of glass-forming colloidal liquids under spherical confinement
• Flexible confinement leads to multiple relaxation regimes in glassy colloidal liquids
• Simple physics of the partly pinned fluid systems
• One-dimensional Kac model of dense amorphous hard spheres
• Thermodynamics, formation dynamics and structural correlations in the bulk amorphous phase of the phase-field crystal model
• Competition of glass and crystal: phase-field model
• How non-equilibrium correlations in active matter reveal the topological crossover in glasses
• Response to "Comment on Static correlations functions and domain walls in glass-forming liquids: The case of a sandwich geometry" [J. Chem. Phys. 144, 227101 (2016)]