Related papers: Structure and Function of Window Glass and Pyrex
Glasses have liquid-like structure, but exhibit solid-like properties. A central question concerns the relation between the structure and mechanical properties of glasses, but structural changes remain difficult to resolve. We use a novel…
We investigate by scattering techniques the structure of water-based soft composite materials comprising a crystal made of Pluronic block-copolymer micelles arranged in a face-centered cubic lattice and a small amount (at most 2% by volume)…
Chirality is an intriguing property of certain molecules, materials or artificial nanostructures, which allows them to interact with the spin angular momentum of the impinging light field. Due to their chiral geometry, they can distinguish…
We use ab initio simulations to investigate the properties of a sodium borosilicate glass of composition 3Na_2O-B_2O_3-6SiO_2. We find that the broadening of the first peak in the radial distribution functions g_BO(r) and g_BNa(r) is due to…
The fragility of a glassforming liquid characterizes how rapidly its relaxation dynamics slow down with cooling. The viscosity of strong liquids follows an Arrhenius law with a temperature-independent barrier height to rearrangements…
The remarkable strength of glasses is examined using the random first order transition theory of the glass transition. The theory predicts that strength depends on elastic modulus but also on the configurational energy frozen in when the…
The original electronic structure of the Pb$^{2+}$ ion explains its particular structural role in crystalline phases and silicate glasses. After a description of the structural role of lead in crystalline phases (PbO, silicates), this…
A recent hypothesis claims that the glass transition itself, though it is a very pronounced relaxation peak, is no separate relaxation process at all, but is just the breakdown of the shear modulus due to the weak elastic dipole interaction…
We compare the ability of various interaction potentials to predict the structural and mechanical properties of silica and sodium silicate glasses. While most structural quantities show a relatively mild dependence on the potential used,…
Free-standing and well-ordered two-dimensional (2D) silica monolayers with tetrahedral (T-silica) and octahedral (O-silica) building blocks are found to be stable by first principles calculations; T-silica is formed by corner-sharing SiO4…
The dielectric anomalies of window-type glasses at low temperatures ($T<$ 1 K) are rather successfully explained by the two-level systems (2LS) tunneling model (TM). However, the magnetic effects discovered in the multisilicate glasses in…
Spin glasses are magnetic systems exhibiting both quenched disorder and frustration, and have often been cited as examples of `complex systems.' In this talk I review some of the basic notions of spin glass physics, and discuss how some of…
The dynamics of silica displays an Arrhenius temperature dependence, classifying silica as a strong glass-former. Using recently developed concepts to analyse the potential energy landscape one can get a fundamental understanding of the…
Network glasses are the physical prototype for many self-organized systems, ranging from proteins to computer science. Conventional theories of gases, liquids, and crystals do not account for the strongly material-selective character of the…
We apply a recently developed optimization scheme to obtain effective potentials for alkali and alkaline-earth aluminosilicate glasses that contains lithium, sodium, potassium, or calcium as modifiers. As input data for the optimization, we…
Comparisons and analogies are drawn between materials ferroic glasses and conventional spin glasses, in terms of both experiment and theoretical modelling, with inter-system conceptual transfers leading to suggestions of further issues to…
Various nanostructured thin solid films on silicate based glass plates commonly used as substrates in contemporary vacuum technologies are studied. Evolution of mesostructured spiral and spiral crack patterns as a result of shrinkage or…
Using molecular dynamics simulation with an angle-dependent Lennard-Jones potential, we study orientational glass with quadrupolar symmetry in mixtures of elliptic particles and circular impurities in two dimensions. With a mild aspect…
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…
The glass transition is considered within two toys models, a mean field spin glass and a directed polymer in a correlated random potential. In the spin glass model there occurs a dynamical transition, where the system condenses in a state…