Low-temperature adiabatic calorimetry of salol and benzophenone and microscopic observation of their crystallization: finding of homogeneous-nucleation-based crystallization

An adiabatic calorimetric and direct microscopic observation of crystallization at low temperatures was performed for salol and benzophenone. Both of the materials in the supercooled-liquid phase exhibited a low-temperature crystallization proceeding in the glass-transition temperature ( T_g) region. The crystallization was observed to proceed as the advance of the crystal front into the liquid phase, and stopped suddenly atT =  227 K and T ≈  215 K for salol and benzophenone, respectively. This anomalous temperature dependence of the crystal-growth rate is a characteristic feature of the homogeneous-nucleation-based (HNB) crystallization, which has been reported for o -terphenyl and triphenylethylene, and the presently observed low-temperature crystallization in salol and benzophenone was concluded to be the HNB crystallization, in which the crystal growth is brought about by the coalescence of crystal nuclei to the crystalline phase on the liquid-crystal interface. The substances exhibiting the HNB crystallization were revealed to have almost the same characteristics with respect to configurational entropy, and undergo the HNB crystallization in the same range of temperature normalized by T_g. These results indicate that the HNB crystallization is potentially a universal phenomenon in fragile liquids, and imply that the process is closely related to the liquid structure changing with temperature.