Related papers: Manipulating the Glass Transition in Nanoscale
We propose a scenario for the glass transition based on the cooperative nature of nucleation processes and entropic effects. The main point is the relation between the off-equilibrium energy dissipation and nucleation processes in…
Performing light scattering experiments we show that introducing short-ranged attraction to a colloidal suspension of nearly hard spheres by addition of free polymer produces new glass transition phenomena. We observe a dramatic…
An analytically tractable model is introduced which exhibits both, a glass--like freezing transition, and a collection of double--well configurations in its zero--temperature potential energy landscape. The latter are generally believed to…
Using molecular simulations, we shed light on the mechanism underlying crystal nucleation in metal alloys and unravel the interplay between crystal nucleation and glass transition, as the conditions of crystallization lie close to this…
We show in numerical simulations that a system of two coupled replicas of a binary mixture of hard spheres undergoes a phase transition in equilibrium at a density slightly smaller than the glass transition density for an unreplicated…
An analysis of diffusion in a supercooled liquid based solely in the density of diffusive directions and the value of energy barriers shows how the potential energy landscape (PEL) approach is capable of explaining the $\alpha$ and $\beta$…
Glass transition is accompanied by a rapid growth of the structural relaxation time and a concomitant decrease of configurational entropy. It remains unclear whether the transition has a thermodynamic origin, and whether the dynamic arrest…
Understanding the mechanical properties of glasses remains elusive since the glass transition itself is not fully understood, even in well studied examples of glass formers in two dimensions. In this context we demonstrate here: (i) a…
There exists a variety of theories of the glass transition and many more numerical models. But because the models need built-in complexity to prevent crystallization, comparisons with theory can be difficult. We study the dynamics of a…
We propose that an onset of glass transition can be defined as the point at which a supercooled liquid acquires the stress relaxation mechanism of a solid glass. We translate this condition into the rate equation for local relaxation…
A theoretical treatment of deeply supercooled liquids is difficult because their properties emerge from spatial inhomogeneities that are self-induced, transient, and nanoscopic. I use computer simulations to analyse self-induced static and…
We use molecular dynamics to investigate the glass transition occurring at large volume fraction, phi, and low temperature, T, in assemblies of soft repulsive particles. We find that equilibrium dynamics in the (phi, T) plane obey a form of…
Polydispersity is found to have a significant effect on the potential energy landscape; the the average inherent structure energy with temperature decreases with polydispersity. Increasing polydispersity at fixed volume fraction decreases…
The ability to control the location of nanoscale objects in liquids is essential for fundamental and applied research from nanofluidics to molecular biology. To overcome their random Brownian motion, the electrostatic fluidic trap creates…
Using the mapping of the Fokker-Planck description of classical stochastic dynamics onto a quantum Hamiltonian, we argue that a dynamical glass transition in the former must have a precise definition in terms of a quantum phase transition…
A directed polymer is considered on a flat substrate with randomly located parallel ridges. It prefers to lie inside wide regions between the ridges. When the transversel width $W=\exp(\lambda L^{1/3})$ is exponential in the longitudinal…
A lattice model of spinless interacting electrons is used to formulate the Landau theory of the Fermi liquid to electron glass quantum phase transition. We demonstrate that the presence of additional random site energies does not affect the…
Despite the use of glasses for thousands of years, the nature of the glass transition is still mysterious. On approaching the glass transition, the growth of dynamic heterogeneity has long been thought to play a key role in explaining the…
The integration of the coupling effects of intrinsic wettability and surface charge in a nanochannel can cause non-intuitive behavior in the electrokinetic energy conversion processes. We demonstrate that in a nanofluidic device the energy…
Cell migration is important in many biological processes, including embryonic development, cancer metastasis, and wound healing. In these tissues, a cell's motion is often strongly constrained by its neighbors, leading to glassy dynamics.…