Particle dynamics and the development of string-like motion in a simulated monoatomic supercooled liquid

The microscopic details of local particle dynamics is studied in a glass-forming one component supercooled liquid modeled by a Dzugutov potential developed for simple metallic glass formers. Our main goal is to investigate particle motion in the supercooled liquid state, and to ascertain the extent to which this motion is cooperative and occurring in quasi-one-dimesional, string-like paths. To this end we investigate in detail the mechanism by which particles move along these paths. In particular, we show that the degree of coherence--that is, simultaneous motion by consecutive particles along a string--depends on the length of the string. For short strings, the motion is highly coherent. For longer strings, the motion is highly coherent only within shorter segments of the string, which we call "microstrings." Very large strings may contain several microstrings within which particles move simultaneously, but individual microstrings within a given string are temporally uncorrelated with each other. We discuss possible underlying mechanism for this complex dynamical behavior, and examine our results in the context of recent work by Garrahan and Chandler [Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 035704 (2002)] in which dynamic facilitation plays a central role in the glass transition.     

Superdipole liquid scenario for the dielectric primary relaxation in supercooled polar liquids

We propose a dynamic structure of coupled dynamic molecular strings for supercooled small polar molecule liquids and accordingly we obtain the Hamiltonian of the rotational degrees of freedom of the system. From the Hamiltonian, the strongly correlated supercooled polar liquid state is renormalized to a normal superdipole liquid state. This scenario describes the following main features of the primary or alpha-relaxation dynamics in supercooled polar liquids: (1) the average relaxation time evolves from a high temperature Arrhenius to a low temperature non-Arrhenius or super-Arrhenius behavior; (2) the relaxation function crosses over from the high temperature exponential to low temperature nonexponential form; and (3) the temperature dependence of the relaxation strength shows non-Curie features. According to the present model, the crossover phenomena of the first two characteristics arise from the transition between the superdipole gas and the superdipole liquid. The model predictions are quantitatively compared with the experimental results of glycerol, a typical glass former.     

Comparative study of temperature dependent orientational relaxation in a model thermotropic liquid crystal and in a model supercooled liquid

Recent optical Kerr effect experiments have revealed a power law decay of the measured signal with a temperature independent exponent at short-to-intermediate times for a number of liquid crystals in the isotropic phase near the isotropic-nematic transition and supercooled molecular liquids above the mode coupling theory critical temperature. In this work, the authors investigate the temperature dependence of short-to-intermediate time orientational relaxation in a model thermotropic liquid crystal across the isotropic-nematic transition and in a binary mixture across the supercooled liquid regime in molecular dynamics simulations. The measure of the experimentally observable optical Kerr effect signal is found to follow a power law decay at short-to-intermediate times for both systems in agreement with recent experiments. In addition, the temperature dependence of the power law exponent is found to be rather weak. As the model liquid crystalline system settles into the nematic phase upon cooling, the decay of the single-particle second-rank orientational time correlation function exhibits a pattern that is similar to what has been observed for supercooled liquids.     

Theory of aging in structural glasses

The random first-order transition theory of the dynamics of supercooled liquids is extended to treat aging phenomena in nonequilibrium structural glasses. A reformulation of the idea of "entropic droplets" in terms of libraries of local energy landscapes is introduced which treats in a uniform way the supercooled liquid (reproducing earlier results) and glassy regimes. The resulting microscopic theory of aging makes contact with the Nayaranaswamy-Moynihan-Tool nonlinear relaxation formalism and the Hodge-Scherer extrapolation of the Adam-Gibbs formula, but deviations from both approaches are predicted and shown to be consistent with experiment. The nonlinearity of glassy relaxation is shown to quantitatively correlate with liquid fragility. The residual non-Arrhenius temperature dependence of relaxation observed in quenched glasses is explained. The broadening of relaxation spectra in the nonequilibrium glass with decreasing temperature is quantitatively predicted. The theory leads to the prediction of spatially fluctuating fictive temperatures in the long-aged glassy state, which have non-Gaussian statistics. This can give rise to "ultraslow" relaxations in systems after deep quenches.     

Orientational dynamics and energy landscape features of thermotropic liquid crystals: An analogy with supercooled liquids

Recent optical kerr effect (OKE) studies have revealed that orientational relaxation of rodlike nematogens near the isotropic-nematic (I-N) phase boundary and also in the nematic phase exhibit temporal power law decay at intermediate times. Such behaviour has drawn an intriguing analogy with supercooled liquids. Here, we have investigated the single-particle and collective orientational dynamics of a family of model system of thermotropic liquid crystals using extensive computer simulations. Several remarkable features of glassy dynamics are on display including non-exponential relaxation, dynamical heterogeneity, and non-Arrhenius temperature dependence of the orientational relaxation time. Over a temperature range near the I-N phase boundary, the system behaves like a fragile glass-forming liquid. Using proper scaling, we construct the usual relaxation time versus inverse temperature plot and explicitly demonstrate that one can successfully define a density dependent fragility of liquid crystals. The fragility of liquid crystals shows a temperature and density dependence which is remarkably similar to the fragility of glass forming supercooled liquids. Energy landscape analysis of inherent structures shows that the breakdown of the Arrhenius temperature dependence of relaxation rate occurs at a temperature that marks the onset of the growth of the depth of the potential energy minima explored by the system.     

Solvation dynamics and electric field relaxation in an imidazolium-PF6 ionic liquid: from room temperature to the glass transition

Time-resolved phosphorescence spectra and anisotropy of quinoxaline were measured in an ionic liquid, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate (BMIM-HFP), in its supercooled state near the glass-transition temperature. The solvation dynamics results are compared with the rotational motion of the probe and with the dielectric behavior of the neat ionic liquid. The dynamics in the viscous state are highly dispersive and show a super-Arrhenius temperature dependence, as typical for glass-forming materials. Combined with room-temperature results, solvation dynamics is observed to follow the structural relaxation times in terms of eta/T for more than 10 decades, from subnanoseconds at room temperature to seconds near the glass-transition temperature T(g). The dielectric modulus relaxation follows this trend only for temperatures T > 1.2T(g) and departs significantly from eta/T in the 1.1T(g) > T > T(g) range. This deviation is reminiscent of the enhanced translational diffusion or fractional Stokes-Einstein behavior observed in many fragile supercooled liquids. Because the electric field relaxation in BMIM-HFP includes dc conductivity, this correlation function involves translational motion and thus displays the effect of enhanced diffusivity. A microscopic model is required for rationalizing the decoupling of solvation dynamics from the longitudinal time scales and the limitation of this effect to the viscous regime with T < 1.2T(g).     

Emergence of a new feature in the high pressure-high temperature relaxation spectrum of tri-propylene glycol

We investigated dielectric relaxation of a tri-propylene glycol system under high compression. By increasing temperature and pressure we observed that a new relaxation process emerges from the low frequency tail of the structural peak. This new peak starts to be visible at about 0.5 GPa and becomes clearly evident at 1.7 GPa. However, this additional peak merges again with the structural one as the glass transition is approached, since it has a weaker temperature dependence. This finding enriches the relaxation scenario of molecular glass formers confirming that the application of very high hydrostatic pressure can favor the detection of new relaxation or otherwise unresolved processes in supercooled liquid systems.     

Compressed exponential relaxation in liquid silicon: universal feature of the crossover from ballistic to diffusive behavior in single-particle dynamics

We report a first-principles molecular-dynamics study of the relaxation dynamics in liquid silicon (l-Si) over a wide temperature range (1000-2200 K). We find that the intermediate scattering function for l-Si exhibits a compressed exponential decay above 1200 K including the supercooled regime, which is in stark contrast to that for normal "dense" liquids which typically show stretched exponential decay in the supercooled regime. The coexistence of particles having ballistic-like motion and those having diffusive-like motion is demonstrated, which accounts for the compressed exponential decay in l-Si. An attempt to elucidate the crossover from the ballistic to the diffusive regime in the "time-dependent" diffusion coefficient is made and the temperature-independent universal feature of the crossover is disclosed.     

NMR study of liquid to solid transition in a glass forming metallic system

Quadrupolar spin-lattice relaxation effect was used to study the temperature dependence of the correlation of electric field gradient (EFG) observed by (63)Cu and (65)Cu NMR in the liquid and supercooled liquid states of Pd(43)Cu(27)Ni(10)P(20) metallic glass forming system. The correlation time of EFG was shown to have a dramatic temperature dependence that cannot be accounted for by available theory. Analyzed in the context of mode coupling theory (MCT), it is shown that the correlation time of EFG follows the scaling equation of MCT and reveals a T(c), the critical temperature of MCT, at 700 K. Other NMR techniques such as chemical exchange line narrowing and stimulated echo pulse sequences were used to study motion of (31)P at lower temperatures. Combined together, these techniques cover the whole range of liquid to solid transition. By comparing the NMR results with data obtained by other techniques, a decoupling of motion for different types of atoms is revealed starting from T(c) and below. This essentially demonstrates a transition from liquidlike to solidlike motion at T(c) as predicted by MCT.     

Study of dielectric relaxations of anhydrous trehalose and maltose glasses

We investigated the frequency dependent dielectric relaxation behaviors of anhydrous trehalose and maltose glasses in the temperature range which covers a supercooled and glassy states. In addition to the α-, Johari-Goldstein (JG) β-, and γ-relaxations in a typical glass forming system, we observed an extra relaxation process between JG β- and γ-relaxations in the dielectric loss spectra. We found that the unknown extra relaxation is a unique property of disaccharide which might originate from the intramolecular motion of flexible glycosidic bond. We also found that the temperature dependence of the JG β-relaxation time changes at 0.95T(g) and it might be universal.     

Crystal growth kinetics exhibit a fragility-dependent decoupling from viscosity

In this paper we establish the temperature dependence of the kinetic coefficient associated with crystal growth into the supercooled liquid for a wide range of organic and inorganic materials. We show that the kinetic coefficient for crystal growth scales with the shear viscosity eta as eta(-xi) and that the exponent depends systematically on the fragility of the liquid. The greater the fragility (i.e., deviation away from an Arrhenius temperature dependence for eta), the larger the difference 1-xi. We argue that this breakdown in scaling between the crystal growth kinetics and the viscosity is a manifestation of heterogeneous dynamics in supercooled liquids. In addition, we show that the absolute growth rate at intermediate viscosities is correlated with the entropy difference between the liquid and the crystal.     

Dynamic light scattering in liquid and supercooled diphenylmethane

We use a dynamic light scattering technique to measure both polarized (VV) and depolarized (VH) spectra of liquid diphenylmethane (DPM) between 288 and 362 K, covering both normal and supercooled liquid ranges. Our results allow extracting information on structural relaxation processes, rotational motions, rotation-translation couplings, and molecular reorientation phenomena in liquid DPM. The VV spectra are modeled according to the microscopic theory of Wang, which assumes that a structural relaxation process dominates the spectrum. We find that the relaxation time of the structural relaxation in DPM follows an Arrhenius behavior. The Rayleigh dip was observed in the VH spectra, which are described using the Andersen-Pecora theory. Our results are discussed in terms of the rotation-translation coupling parameter, which we find independent of temperature over the experimental range. The collective reorientation time also follows an Arrhenius behavior with temperature. Finally, we calculate the hydrodynamic volumes for the reorientation process from geometric molecular models in two hydrodynamic limits: slip and stick boundary conditions. Our results suggest that the DMP molecule reorientates in quasi-slipping conditions in the bulk liquid.     

Revealing long-range density fluctuations in dialkylimidazolium chloride ionic liquids by dynamic light scattering

In this study, the structures and dynamics of ionic liquids of 1-allyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([AMIM][Cl]) and 1-n-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([BMIM][Cl]) were studied by dynamic light scattering with polarized and depolarized geometries in the temperature range from 300 to 400 K. The temperature range covered supercooled and liquid states for [BMIM][Cl] and covered the liquid state for [AMIM][Cl]. The results show that for these ionic liquids at all chosen temperatures only one ultraslow relaxation is observed in the polarized component of dynamic light scattering, however, the ultraslow relaxation is not observed in the depolarized component. The ultraslow relaxation exhibited several typical features of the "cluster" mode generally found in glass-forming liquids and polymer melts, such as diffusive, strongly scattering-vector-dependent, and nearly exponential characters, which thus corresponded to long-range density fluctuations. The physical origin for long-range density fluctuations was the existence of heterogeneities with large characteristic length scales in these ionic liquids. It was further considered that molecules of these ionic liquids not only tended to aggregate to form dynamic clusters but also possibly formed dynamic networks in the supercooled state and the heterogeneities could exist even at temperatures higher than the melting points.     

Decoupling charge transport from the structural dynamics in room temperature ionic liquids

Light scattering and dielectric spectroscopy measurements were performed on the room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) [C4mim][NTf2] in a broad temperature and frequency range. Ionic conductivity was used to estimate self-diffusion of ions, while light scattering was used to study structural relaxation. We demonstrate that the ionic diffusion decouples from the structural relaxation process as the temperature of the sample decreases toward T(g). The strength of the decoupling appears to be significantly lower than that expected for a supercooled liquid of similar fragility. The structural relaxation process in the RTIL follows well the high-temperature mode coupling theory (MCT) scenario. Using the MCT analysis we estimated the dynamic crossover temperature in [C4mim][NTf2] to be T(c) ~ 225 ± 5 K. However, our analysis reveals no sign of the dynamic crossover in the ionic diffusion process.     

Nonexponential relaxation and fragility in a model system and in supercooled liquids

Among the outstanding problems in the theory of supercooled liquids are the reasons for the rapid increase in their viscosity and relaxation times as the temperature is lowered towards the glass transition temperature Tg, the nonexponential time dependence of the relaxation, and the possible connection between these two properties. The ferromagnetic Potts model on a square latice is a simple system that is found to exhibit these properties. Our calculations show that in this system the connection between them is associated with the dependence on temperature and time of the average environment of the sites. Some of the consequences of this for understanding the behavior of supercooled liquids are discussed.     

Thermodynamic, structural, and dynamic properties of supercooled water confined in mesoporous MCM-41 studied with calorimetric, neutron diffraction, and neutron spin echo measurements

Thermodynamic, structural, and dynamic properties of heavy water (D(2)O) confined in mesoporous silica glass MCM-41 C10, C12, and C14 were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry, neutron diffraction, and neutron spin echo (NSE) measurements, respectively. The DSC data showed that no crystallization of D(2)O confined in C10 occurs in a temperature range between 298 and 180 K, and that crystalline ice is formed at 204 and 221 K for C12 and C14, respectively. For C10, the neutron radial distribution functions of confined D(2)O suggested a structural change in the supercooled state between 223 and 173 K. For C10 sample, it has been found that the tetrahedral-like water structure is partially enhanced in the central part of pores at 173 K. For all the samples, the intermediate scattering functions from the NSE measurements are fitted by the Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts stretched exponential function which implies that confined supercooled D(2)O exhibits a wide distribution of relaxation times. For C10, C12, and C14 samples, between 298 and 240 K, the relaxation times of supercooled D(2)O follow remarkably well the Vogel-Fulcher-Tamman equation; for C10 sample, below 240 K, the relaxation times of nonfreezing D(2)O show an Arrhenius type behavior. From the present experimental results on calorimetric, structural, and dynamic properties, it has been concluded that supercooled D(2)O confined in MCM-41 C10 experiences a transition from high-density to low-density hydrogen-bonded structure at around 229 K.     

Particle rearrangements during transitions between local minima of the potential energy landscape of a binary Lennard-Jones liquid

The potential energy landscape (PEL) of binary Lennard-Jones (BLJ) mixtures exhibits local minima, or inherent structures (IS), which are organized into metabasins (MBs). We study the particle rearrangements related to transitions between both successive IS and successive MB for a small 80:20 BLJ system near the mode-coupling temperature TMCT. The analysis includes the displacements of individual particles, the localization of the rearrangements, and the relevance of string-like motion. We find that the particle rearrangements during IS and MB transitions do not change significantly at TMCT. In particular, an onset of single particle hopping on the length scale of the interparticle distance is not observed. Further, it is demonstrated that IS and MB dynamics are spatially heterogeneous and facilitated by string-like motion. To investigate the mechanism of string-like motion, we follow the particle rearrangements during suitable sequences of IS transitions. We find that most strings observed after a series of transitions do not move coherently during a single transition, but subunits of different sizes are active at different times. Several findings suggest that, though string-like motion is of comparable relevance when the system explores a MB and when it moves from one MB to another, the occurrence of a successful string enables the system to exit a MB. Moreover, we show that the particle rearrangements during two consecutive MB transitions are basically uncorrelated. In particular, different groups of particles are highly mobile. We further find the positions of strings during successive MB transitions weakly but positively correlated, supporting the idea of dynamic facilitation. Finally, the relation between the features of the potential energy landscape and the relaxation processes in supercooled liquids is discussed.     

Time dependent stretching of aging dynamics in a generalized hydrodynamic model for supercooled liquids

The nonequilibrium dynamics and aging behavior of a supercooled liquid is investigated from an analysis of the correlation of density fluctuations at two different times. The dynamic correlation functions are computed by solving numerically the equations of nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics. The aging time dependence follows a modified stretched exponential form with a relaxation time which is dependent on the aging time. This is similar to the behavior seen in the aging data of dielectric response functions of a typical glass forming liquid.     

Johari-Goldstein relaxation and crystallization of sorbitol to ordered and disordered phases

The equilibrium permittivity epsilon(s) and the dielectric relaxation spectra of supercooled liquid D-sorbitol were measured during its crystallization to orientationally disordered or ordered phases depending on the sample preparation procedure at several fixed temperatures up to a period of 6 days. The epsilon(s) measurements showed that when the sample was contaminated by a minute amount of crystals, it crystallized to an ordered phase. When the liquid was not contaminated, the sample crystallized to an orientationally disordered phase. When supercooled D-sorbitol was kept close to its T(g), its dielectric spectra did not change over a period of 138.5 h. It was found that the Johari-Goldstein (JG) relaxation rate of the orientationally disordered crystalline phase is higher in comparison with that of the supercooled liquid, the spectrum broader, and the relaxation strength lower. Its glasslike transition temperature is higher than T(g) of the liquid. The results on crystallization showed that the structural changes occurring at a temperature where the alpha relaxation emerges from the JG relaxation affects the crystallization kinetics of the liquid.     

Measuring diffusivity in supercooled liquid nanoscale films using inert gas permeation. II. Diffusion of Ar, Kr, Xe, and CH4 through methanol

We present an experimental technique to measure the diffusivity of supercooled liquids at temperatures near their T(g). The approach uses the permeation of inert gases through supercooled liquid overlayers as a measure of the diffusivity of the supercooled liquid itself. The desorption spectra of the probe gas are used to extract the low temperature supercooled liquid diffusivities. In the preceding companion paper, we derived equations using ideal model simulations from which the diffusivity could be extracted using the desorption peak times for isothermal or peak temperatures for temperature programmed desorption experiments. Here, we discuss the experimental conditions for which these equations are valid and demonstrate their utility using amorphous methanol with Ar, Kr, Xe, and CH(4) as probe gases. The approach offers a new method by which the diffusivities of supercooled liquids can be measured in the experimentally challenging temperature regime near the glass transition temperature.