Glasses denser than the supercooled liquid

When aged below the glass transition temperature, Tg, the density of a glass cannot exceed that of the metastable supercooled liquid (SCL) state, unless crystals are nucleated. The only exception is when another polyamorphic SCL state exists, with a density higher than that of the ordinary SCL. Experimentally, such polyamorphic states and their corresponding liquid–liquid phase transitions have only been observed in network-forming systems or those with polymorphic crystalline states. In otherwise simple liquids, such phase transitions have not been observed, either in aged or vapor-deposited stable glasses, even near the Kauzmann temperature. Here, we report that the density of thin vapor-deposited films of N,N′-bis(3-methylphenyl)-N,N′-diphenylbenzidine (TPD) can exceed their corresponding SCL density by as much as 3.5% and can even exceed the crystal density under certain deposition conditions. We identify a previously unidentified high-density supercooled liquid (HD-SCL) phase with a liquid–liquid phase transition temperature (TLL) ∼35 K below the nominal glass transition temperature of the ordinary SCL. The HD-SCL state is observed in glasses deposited in the thickness range of 25 to 55 nm, where thin films of the ordinary SCL have exceptionally enhanced surface mobility with large mobility gradients. The enhanced mobility enables vapor-deposited thin films to overcome kinetic barriers for relaxation and access the HD-SCL state. The HD-SCL state is only thermodynamically favored in thin films and transforms rapidly to the ordinary SCL when the vapor deposition is continued to form films with thicknesses more than 60 nm.

Predicting the Thermodynamic Ideal Glass Transition Temperature in Glass-Forming Liquids

The Kauzmann temperature TK is a lower limit of glass transition temperature, and is known as the ideal thermodynamic glass transition temperature. A supercooled liquid will condense into glass before TK. Studying the ideal glass transition temperature is beneficial to understanding the essence of glass transition in glass-forming liquids. The Kauzmann temperature TK values are predicted in 38 kinds of glass-forming liquids. In order to acquire the accurate predicted TK by using a new deduced equation, we obtained the best fitting parameters of the deduced equation with the high coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.966). In addition, the coefficients of two reported relations are replaced by the best fitting parameters to obtain the accurate predicted TK, which makes the R2 values increase from 0.685 and 0.861 to 0.970 and 0.969, respectively. Three relations with the best fitting parameters are applied to obtain the accurate predicted TK values.

Observation of an apparent first-order glass transition in ultrafragile Pt–Cu–P bulk metallic glasses

An experimental study of the configurational thermodynamics for a series of near-eutectic Pt80-xCuxP20 bulk metallic glass-forming alloys is reported where 14 < x < 27. The undercooled liquid alloys exhibit very high fragility that increases as x decreases, resulting in an increasingly sharp glass transition. With decreasing x, the extrapolated Kauzmann temperature of the liquid, TK, becomes indistinguishable from the conventionally defined glass transition temperature, Tg. For x < 17, the observed liquid configurational enthalpy vs. T displays a marked discontinuous drop or latent heat at a well-defined freezing temperature, Tgm. The entropy drop for this first-order liquid/glass transition is approximately two-thirds of the entropy of fusion of the crystallized eutectic alloy. Below Tgm, the configurational entropy of the frozen glass continues to fall rapidly, approaching that of the crystallized eutectic solid in the low T limit. The so-called Kauzmann paradox, with negative liquid entropy (vs. the crystalline state), is averted and the liquid configurational entropy appears to comply with the third law of thermodynamics. Despite their ultrafragile character, the liquids at x = 14 and 16 are bulk glass formers, yielding fully glassy rods up to 2- and 3-mm diameter on water quenching in thin-wall silica tubes. The low Cu content alloys are definitive examples of glasses that exhibit first-order melting.

LOOKING AT THE GLASS TRANSITION: CHALLENGES OF EXTREME TIME SCALES AND OTHER INTERESTING PROBLEMS

ABSTRACT The behavior of glass-forming materials is examined with emphasis on the below-glass transition behavior. A major question that is related to the super-Arrhenius behavior of the dynamics of glass-forming systems is whether the apparent divergence at finite temperature continues below the kinetic or laboratory glass transition that is related to the limits of measurement and is standardized so that the material relaxation time is near 100 s. The problem arises because as the temperature decreases, the time scales required to reach equilibrium (or metastable equilibrium) become geologically long. Yet the apparent finite temperature divergence is fundamental to many theories of glasses; therefore, it becomes essential to find ways to finesse the extreme time scales related to the so-called Kauzmann paradox to bring new information to the ongoing conversation concerning the existence or not of an ideal glass transition at either the Kauzmann temperature or the Vogel–Fulcher–Tammann temperature. After describing the framework of the glassy state that is formed by the early ideas of a fictive temperature, we examine the use of extremely low fictive temperature glasses as a means to potentially get around the long time-scale problem. The challenge is to find ways to create such glasses and measure their properties. In addition to looking at the dynamic behavior of a 20-million-year-old amber and a vapor-deposited amorphous perfluoropolymer whose fictive temperature was the same as the Kauzmann temperature for the material, we also examine the possibility of directly testing the thermodynamics of an ideal glass transition by making athermal solutions of a poly(α-methyl styrene) and its pentamer, where we find that the entropy surface determined from extrapolation of the heat capacity to zero pentamer shows no distinct transition at as much as 180 K below the Kauzmann temperature. The significance of the dynamics of the stable glasses and the thermodynamics of the polymer solutions is discussed in terms that challenge the idea of an ideal glass transition. We also look in more detail at the ability to use vapor deposition to make ethylbenzene, a small-molecule organic, into an ultra-stable glass with a fictive temperature that is possibly below the Kauzmann temperature of this material. We end with remarks on the question of decoupling of different relaxation mechanisms as something not treated by current theories of glass, and we consider some open questions related to the fact that the glass transition remains an unresolved and important problem.

A New Perspective on the Kauzmann Entropy Paradox: A Crystal/Glass Critical Point in Four- and Three-Dimensions

In this article, a new perspective on the Kauzmann point is presented. The “ideal glass transition” that occurs at the Kauzmann temperature is the point at which the configurational entropy of an undercooled metastable liquid equals that of its crystalline counterpart. We model solidifying liquids by using a quaternion orientational order parameter and find that the Kauzmann point is a critical point that exists to separate crystalline and non-crystalline solid states. We identify the Kauzmann point as a first-order critical point, and suggest that it belongs to quaternion ordered systems that exist in four- or three-dimensions. This “Kauzmann critical point” can be considered to be a higher-dimensional analogue to the superfluid-to-Mott insulator quantum phase transition that occurs in two- and one-dimensional complex ordered systems. Such critical points are driven by tuning a non-thermal frustration parameter, and result due to characteristic softening of a `Higgs’ type mode that corresponds to amplitude fluctuations of the order parameter. The first-order nature of the finite temperature Kauzmann critical point is a consequence of the discrete change of the topology of the ground state manifold of the quaternion order parameter field that applies to crystalline and non-crystalline solids.