Silica is known as the archetypal strong liquid, exhibiting an Arrhenius viscosity curve with a high glass transition temperature and constant activation energy. However, given the ideally isostatic nature of the silica network, the presence of even a small concentration of defects can lead to a significant decrease in both the glass transition temperature and activation energy for viscous flow. To understand the impact of trace level dopants on the viscosity of silica, we measure the viscosity-temperature curves for seven silica glass samples having different impurities, including four natural and three synthetic samples. Depending on the type of dopant, the glass transition temperature can vary by nearly 300 K. A common crossover is found for all viscosity curves around ~2200-2500 K, which we attribute to a change of the transport mechanism in the melt from being dominated by intrinsic defects at high temperature to dopant-induced defects at low temperatures.
The high-pressure dynamics of a computer-modeled silica melt is studied in the framework of the mode-coupling theory of the glass transition (MCT) using static-structure input from molecular-dynamics (MD) computer simulation. The theory reproduces the experimentally known viscosity minimum (diffusivity maximum) as a function of density or pressure and explains it in terms of a corresponding minimum in its critical temperature. This minimum arises from a gradual change in the equilibrium static structure which shifts from being dominated by tetrahedral ordering to showing the cageing known from…
The origin of the fragile-to-strong crossover in liquid silica is characterized in terms of properties of the potential energy landscape (PEL). Using the standard BKS model of silica we observe a low-energy cutoff of the PEL. It is shown that this feature of the PEL is responsible for the occurrence of the fragile-to-strong crossover and may also explain the avoidance of the Kauzmann paradox. The number of defects, i.e. deviations from the ideal tetrahedral structure, vanishes for configurations with energies close to this cutoff. This suggests a structural reason for this cutoff.
The short-range structure of an iron doped soda-lime glass was investigated by infrared emissivity spectroscopy from room temperature up to the melt. Quantitative information on the distribution of the Q^n tetrahedral units was obtained by fitting the emissivity spectra using a dielectric function model (DFM). The DFM is based on causal Gaussian bands, associated with the stretching motions of the silicate tetrahedra. The changes in the absorption modes are related to the activation of a dynamical disorder that continuously increases with temperature. The obtained Q^n speciation at room temper…
The main cause of the fragile-to-strong crossover of 3D silica was previously attributed to the presence of a low energy cutoff in the potential energy landscape. The important question emerges about the microscopic origin of this crossover and the generalizibility to other glass-formers. In this work, the fragile-to-strong crossover of a model 2D glassy system is analyzed via molecular dynamics simulation, which represents 2D-silica. By separating the sampled defect and defect-free inherent structures, we are able to identify their respective density of state distributions with respect to ene…
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 responsible for relaxation, whereas fragile liquids experience a much faster increase in their dynamics, suggesting a barrier height that increases with decreasing temperature. Strong glassformers are typically network glasses, while fragile glassformers are typically molecular or hard-sphere-like. As a result of these differences at the microscopic level, strong …
Recent molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of liquid silica, using the ``BKS'' model [Van Beest, Kramer and van Santen, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 64}, 1955 (1990)], have demonstrated that the liquid undergoes a dynamical crossover from super-Arrhenius, or ``fragile'' behavior, to Arrhenius, or ``strong'' behavior, as temperature $T$ is decreased. From extensive MD simulations, we show that this fragile-to-strong crossover (FSC) can be connected to changes in the properties of the potential energy landscape, or surface (PES), of the liquid. To achieve this, we use thermodynamic integration to evalu…
Ultrastable vapor-deposited glasses display uncommon material properties. Most remarkably, upon heating they are believed to melt via a liquid front that originates at the free surface and propagates over a mesoscopic crossover length, before crossing over to bulk melting. We combine swap Monte Carlo with molecular dynamics simulations to prepare and melt isotropic amorphous films of unprecedendtly high kinetic stability. We are able to directly observe both bulk and front melting, and the crossover between them. We measure the front velocity over a broad range of conditions, and a crossover l…
Cooperative polymer dynamics at the crossover between the unentangled and the entangled regimes: theoretical predictions of scattering and linear shear relaxation for polyethylene melts
Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is one of the most versatile probes for silicate glasses, allowing determination of, e.g., transition temperatures (glass, crystallization, melting) and the temperature dependence of heat capacity. However, complications arise for glasses featuring overlapping transitions and low sensitivity, e.g., arising from SiO2-rich compositions with small change in heat capacity during glass transition or the low sensitivity of thermocouples at high temperature. These challenges might be overcome using temperature-modulated DSC (TM-DSC), which enables separation of…
We study the pressure dependence of the melting mechanism of a surface free Lennard-Jones crystal by constant pressure Monte Carlo simulation. The difference between the overheating temperature($T_{OH}$) and the thermodynamical melting point($T_M$) increase for increasing pressure. When particles move into the repulsive part of the potential the properties at $T_{OH}$ change. There is a crossover pressure where the volume jump becomes pressure-independent. The overheating limit is pre-announced by thermal excitation of big clusters of defects. The temperature zone where the system is dominated…
MgGeO$_3$-perovskite is known to be a low-pressure analog of MgSiO$_3$-perovskite in many respects, but especially in regard to the post-perovskite transition. As such, investigation of spin state changes in Fe-bearing MgGeO$_3$ might help to clarify some aspects of this type of state change in Fe-bearing MgSiO$_3$. Using DFT+U calculations, we have investigated pressure induced spin state changes in Fe$^{2+}$ and Fe$^{3+}$ in MgGeO$_3$ perovskite and post-perovskite. Owing to the relatively larger atomic size of germanium compared to silicon, germanate phases have larger unit cell volume and …
In this work, we revisit the fragile-to-strong transition (FTS) in the simulated BKS silica from the perspective of microscopic dynamics in an effort to elucidate the dynamical behaviors of fragile and strong glass-forming liquids. Softness, which is a machine-learned feature from local atomic structures, is used to predict the microscopic activation energetics and long-term dynamics. The FTS is found to originate from a change in the temperature dependence of the microscopic activation energetics. Furthermore, results suggest there are two diffusion channels with different energy barriers in …
Results solving the long standing puzzle regarding the phase diagram and the pressure evolution of the melting temperature Tm(P) of gallium nitride (GaN), the most promising semiconducting material for innovative modern electronic applications, are presented. The analysis is based on (i) studies of the decomposition curve in P-T plane up to challenging P equal 9 GPa, (ii) novel method enabling Tm(P) determination despite the earlier decomposition, and (iii) the pressure invariant parameterization of Tm(P) curve, showing the reversal melting for P greater-than 22 GPa. This is linked to a possib…
The Arrhenius crossover temperature, $T_{A}$, corresponds to a thermodynamic state wherein the atomistic dynamics of a liquid becomes heterogeneous and cooperative; and the activation barrier of diffusion dynamics becomes temperature-dependent at temperatures below $T_{A}$. The theoretical estimation of this temperature is difficult for some types of materials, especially silicates and borates. In these materials, self-diffusion as a function of the temperature $T$ is reproduced by the Arrhenius law, where the activation barrier practically independent on the temperature $T$. The purpose of th…
In this paper, we report on the charge transport properties of hybrid nanoparticles (NPs) based on the polymeric 1D compound [Fe(Htrz)2(trz)](BF4), which is one of the most promising SCO systems for designing electronic devices. In particular, we used for the first time hybrid SCO NPs covered with a silica shell and placed in between single-layer graphene electrodes. We evidence a reproducible thermal hysteresis loop in the conductance above room-temperature, meaning that no degradation of the current levels has been detected; we thus conclude that the robustness of the spin-transition is sign…
