Related papers: Towards glasses with permanent stability
In supercooled liquids, vitrification generally suppresses crystallization. Yet some glasses can still crystallize despite the arrest of diffusive motion. This ill-understood process may limit the stability of glasses, but its microscopic…
The glassy state is known to undergo slow structural relaxation, where the system progressively explores lower free-energy minima which are either amorphous (ageing) or crystalline (devitrification). Recently, there is growing interest in…
The discovery of ultrastable glasses has raised novel challenges about glassy systems. Recent experiments studied the macroscopic devitrification of ultrastable glasses into liquids upon heating but lacked microscopic resolution. We use…
By molecular-dynamics simulations, we have studied the devitrification (or crystallization) of aged hard-sphere glasses. First, we find that the dynamics of the particles are intermittent: Quiescent periods, when the particles simply…
Crystallization and vitrification are two different routes to form a solid. Normally these two processes suppress each other, with the glass transition preventing crystallization at high density (or low temperature). This is even true for…
A glass is conventionally obtained by cooling a bulk supercooled liquid through its glass transition temperature. The discovery of ultrastable glasses prepared using physical vapor deposition, together with the recent multiplication of…
Using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations for a system of $10^6$ particles, the response of a dense amorphous solid to the continuous expansion of its volume is investigated. We find that the spatially uniform glassy state becomes…
Glass films created by vapor-depositing molecules onto a substrate can exhibit properties similar to those of ordinary glasses aged for thousands of years. It is believed that enhanced surface mobility is the mechanism that allows vapor…
We use a swap Monte Carlo algorithm to numerically prepare bulk glasses with kinetic stability comparable to that of glass films produced experimentally by physical vapor deposition. By melting these systems into the liquid state, we show…
A growing body of experimental work indicates that physical vapor deposition provides an effective route for preparation of stable glasses, whose properties correspond in some cases to those expected for glasses that have been aged for…
Ultrastable glasses have risen to prominence due to their potentially useful material properties and the tantalizing possibility of a general method of preparation via vapor deposition. Despite the importance of this novel class of…
Recently, ultrastable glasses have been created through vapor deposition. Subsequently, computer simulation algorithms have been proposed that mimic the vapor deposition process and result in simulated glasses with increased stability. In…
Amorphous solids, such as glasses, have complex responses to deformations, with significant consequences in material design and applications. In this respect two intertwined aspects are important: stability and reversibility. It is crucial…
Apart from not having crystallized, supercooled liquids can be considered as being properly equilibrated and thus can be described by a few thermodynamic control variables. In contrast, glasses and other amorphous solids can be arbitrarily…
A recent breakthrough in glass science has been the synthesis of ultrastable glasses via physical vapor deposition techniques. These samples display enhanced thermodynamic, kinetic and mechanical stability, with important implications for…
Thermodynamic multi-component solution solidification approach to liquid-to-glass transition is proposed and actual mechanisms underlying vitrification, other than viscous slowdown, are identified. Due to polydisperse aggregation in liquid…
We derive a microscopic criterion for the stability of hard sphere configurations, and we show empirically that this criterion is marginally satisfied in the glass. This observation supports a geometric interpretation for the initial rapid…
We report a detailed experimental study of the structure and dynamics of glassy states in hard spheres with short-range attraction. The system is a suspension of nearly-hard-sphere colloidal particles and non-adsorbing linear polymer which…
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…
During devitrification, pre-existing crystallites grow by adding particles to their surface via a process that is either thermally activated (diffusive mode) or happens without kinetic barriers (fast crystal growth mode). It is yet unclear…