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Glasses and gels are the two dynamically arrested, disordered states of matter. Despite their importance, their similarities and differences remain elusive, especially at high density. We identify dynamical and structural signatures which…
Understanding, predicting and eventually improving the resistance to fracture of silicate materials is of primary importance to design new glasses that would be tougher, while retaining their transparency. However, the atomic mechanism of…
The onset of structural arrest and glass formation in a concentrated suspension of silica nanoparticles in a water-lutidine binary mixture near its consolute point is studied by exploiting the near-critical fluid degrees of freedom to…
The crystalline structure of minerals due to the highly ordered assembly of its constituent atoms, ions or molecules confers a considerable hardness and brittleness to the materials. As a result, they are generally subject to fracture. Here…
A novel form of amorphous matter characterized by marginal stability was recently discovered in the mean-field theory of structural glasses. Using this approach, we provide complete phase diagrams delimiting the location of the marginally…
Understanding the conditions which favor crystallisation or vitrification of liquids has been a long-standing scientific problem. Another connected, and not yet well understood question is the relationship between the glassy and the various…
The nature of polyamorphism and amorphous-to-amorphous transition is investigated by means of an exactly solvable model with quenched disorder, the spherical s+p multi-spin interaction model. The analysis is carried out in the framework of…
The structural evolution with temperature of pure silica (SiO2), sodium-silicate (5Na2O-95SiO2, 10Na2O-90SiO2 and 25Na2O-75SiO2) and albite (15Na2O-15Al2O3-75SiO2) glasses previously densified from hot compression is monitored with a…
In order to design tougher materials, it is crucial to understand the relationship between their composition and their resistance to fracture. To this end, we investigate the fracture toughness of usual sodium silicate glasses (NS) and…
Amorphous solids are mechanically rigid while possessing a disordered structure similar to that of dense liquids. Recent research indicates that dynamical heterogeneity, spatio-temporal fluctuations in local dynamical behavior, might help…
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…
We study by molecular dynamics the interplay between arrest and crystallization in hard spheres. For state points in the plane of volume fraction ($0.54 \leq phi \leq 0.63$) and polydispersity ($0 \leq s \leq 0.085$), we delineate states…
The discrete Gaussian model for the surface of a crystal deposited on a disordered substrate is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. A continuous transition is found from a phase with a thermally-induced roughness to a glassy one in which…
Crystallization from an amorphous atomic structure is usually seen as a spontaneous process in pursuit of a lower energy state, but for alloy systems it is often hard to elucidate because of the intrinsic structural and compositional…
Topological defects are typically quantified relative to ordered backgrounds. The importance of these defects to the understanding of physical phenomena including diverse equilibrium melting transitions from low temperature ordered to…
The specific heat Cp and other properties of glasses (ranging from amorphous solids to disordered crystals) at low temperatures, are well known to be markedly different from those in fully-ordered crystals. For decades, this qualitative,…
It is shown that structuring at the microlevel, a previously not described in detail phenomenon, is the intrinsic property of water and aqueous solutions. At room conditions water (including "ultrapure" one) and aqueous solutions are…
Glass formation is one of the most interesting phenomena in the condensed matter field. Considerable effort has gone into understanding and predicting the glass formability. However, the previous prediction requires the glass first made…
Impregnation treatments are one of the alternatives to protect concrete-based building and monuments from weathering degradation. However, it is important to consider the chemical compatibility of the reaction products with the building…
Glasses usually represent the lower limit for the thermal conductivity of solids, but a fundamental understanding of lattice heat transport in amorphous materials can provide design rules to beat such a limit. Here we investigate the role…