Related papers: Hidden polymorphs drive the vitrification in B2O3
X-ray photon correlation is used to probe the slow dynamics of the glass-former B2O3 across the glass transition. In the undercooled liquid phase the decay times of the measured correlation functions are consistent with visible light…
Vanadium sesquioxide, V2O3, is a prototypical metal-to-insulator system where, in temperature-dependent studies, the transition always coincides with a corundum-to-monoclinic structural transition. As a function of pressure, V2O3 follows…
Crystallization pressure drives deformation and damage in monuments, buildings and the Earth's crust. Even though the phenomenon has been known for 170 years there is no agreement between theoretical calculations of the maximum attainable…
In ABO3 perovskites, oxygen octahedron rotations are common structural distortions that can promote large ferroelectricity in BiFeO3 with an R3c structure [1], but suppress ferroelectricity in CaTiO3 with a Pbnm symmetry [2]. For many…
The structure of dielectric perovskite BaZrO$_3$, long known to be cubic at room temperature without any structural phase transition with variation of temperature, has been recently disputed to have different ground state structures with…
Much attention has been devoted to water's metastable phase behavior, including polyamorphism (multiple amorphous solid phases), and the hypothesized liquid-liquid transition and associated critical point. However, the possible relationship…
In view of the strong anisotropy of oxygen diffusion in high-Tc ceramic YBa2Cu3Ox, it is supposed that a polycrystalline sample of this material can be presented as consisting of crystal grains where each grain was formed by a certain…
At high pressure, the typical behavior of elements dictated by the periodic table - including oxidation numbers, stoichiometries in compounds, and reactivity, to name but a few - is altered dramatically. As pressure is applied, the…
Understanding and controlling physical aging, i.e. the spontaneous temporal evolution of out-of-equilibrium systems, represents one of the greatest tasks in material science. Recent studies have revealed the existence of a complex atomic…
We use ab initio simulations to study the static and dynamic properties of a sodium borosilicate liquid with composition 3Na_2O-B_2O_3-6SiO_2, i.e. a system that is the basis of many glass-forming materials. In particular we focus on the…
A simple model of a glass former fluid, consisting of a bidisperse mixture of penetrable spheres is studied. The model shows a transition from fragile to strong behavior as temperature is reduced. This transition is driven by the…
Among the many physical properties, the amorphous state manifests itself in the most spectacular way in heat transport. Anomalously low thermal conductivity, its low-temperature dependence as a function of temperature, the presence of a…
Metallic glasses have attracted considerable interest in recent years due to their unique combination of superb properties and processability. Predicting bulk metallic glass formers from known parameters remains a challenge and the search…
Targeting specific technological applications requires the control of nanoparticle properties, especially the crystalline polymorph. Freezing a nanodroplet deposited on a solid substrate leads to the formation of crystalline structures. We…
Despite the omnipresence of colloidal suspensions, little is known about the influence of shape on phase transformations, especially in nonequilibrium. To date, real-space imaging results are limited to systems composed of spherical…
Key to resolving the scientific challenge of the glass transition is to understand the origin of the massive increase in viscosity of liquids cooled below their melting temperature (avoiding crystallisation). A number of competing and often…
Liquids under confinement differ in behavior from their bulk counterparts and can acquire properties that are specific to the confined phase and linked to the nature and structure of the host matrix. While confined liquid water is not a new…
When we lower the temperature of a liquid, at some point we meet a first order phase transition to the crystal. Yet, under certain conditions it is possible to keep the system in its metastable phase and to avoid crystallization. In this…
Via large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, we observe the melting of a topological glass of stiff ring polymers by incorporating flexible ring polymers, along an isobaric path. As more flexible ring polymers are introduced, cluster…
In a recent manuscript, the discovery of a new phenomenon in glasses has been reported: {\it glass paramagnetism}, that is the intrinsic magnetisation developed by a substance that has failed to crystallise in a temperature quench when…