TY - JOUR
T1 - Emergence of equilibrated liquid regions within the glass
AU - Vila-Costa, Ana
AU - Gonzalez-Silveira, Marta
AU - Rodríguez-Tinoco, Cristian
AU - Rodríguez-López, Marta
AU - Rodriguez-Viejo, Javier
N1 - Funding Information:
J.R.-V. and M.G.-S. acknowledge grant MAT2016-79759-R funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and ‘ERDF A way of making Europe’, and grant PID2020-117409RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. C.R.-T. is a Serra Hunter Fellow. The ICN2 was funded by the CERCA programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. The ICN2 was supported by the Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence Programme, funded by the Spanish Research Agency (AEI, grant no. SEV-2017-0706). All authors acknowledge Ll. Abad and IMB-CNM-CSIC for the fabrication of the nanocalorimeters.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2023/1
Y1 - 2023/1
N2 - The conventional understanding of the glass transition is that the transition from glass to liquid appears as a dynamic process in which atoms or molecules relax cooperatively into the equilibrium phase. Here we show that—in contrast to this picture—isolated regions of liquid form within the glassy matrix and the nature of the glass transition at a given temperature depends on the ratio between the relaxation time of the glass, τglass, and the alpha relaxation time of the equilibrated liquid, τα. At temperatures at which τglass/τα is large, we observe that high-mobility regions transit directly into the equilibrated liquid and subsequently grow by dynamic facilitation before—or while—cooperative glass relaxation sets into play. On the contrary, at temperatures associated with smaller τglass/τα, the glass transition proceeds by cooperative relaxation dynamics throughout the material. This behaviour is independent of the experimental procedure or protocol used to produce the glass.
AB - The conventional understanding of the glass transition is that the transition from glass to liquid appears as a dynamic process in which atoms or molecules relax cooperatively into the equilibrium phase. Here we show that—in contrast to this picture—isolated regions of liquid form within the glassy matrix and the nature of the glass transition at a given temperature depends on the ratio between the relaxation time of the glass, τglass, and the alpha relaxation time of the equilibrated liquid, τα. At temperatures at which τglass/τα is large, we observe that high-mobility regions transit directly into the equilibrated liquid and subsequently grow by dynamic facilitation before—or while—cooperative glass relaxation sets into play. On the contrary, at temperatures associated with smaller τglass/τα, the glass transition proceeds by cooperative relaxation dynamics throughout the material. This behaviour is independent of the experimental procedure or protocol used to produce the glass.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85140589288
U2 - 10.1038/s41567-022-01791-w
DO - 10.1038/s41567-022-01791-w
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85140589288
SN - 1745-2473
VL - 19
SP - 114
EP - 119
JO - Nature Physics
JF - Nature Physics
IS - 1
ER -