Scientists discover liquid glass with previously unknown structural elements

12.01.2021
Scientists discover liquid glass with previously unknown structural elements

Scientists from the University of Constance (Germany) have discovered liquid glass with previously unknown structural elements. While glass itself has long been a popular and well-known material, it also presents a major scientific conundrum. The results of the work were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Usually, when a material changes from a liquid to a solid state, the molecules line up and form a kind of crystalline pattern. There is no such thing in glass. There, the molecules are actually frozen in place before crystallization occurs. This strange and disordered state is still a subject of study.

Scientists have added another level of difficulty to the glass puzzle. They used a model system that includes suspensions of specially made ellipsoidal colloids. And, having done this, the experts discovered a new state of matter - liquid glass, when individual particles can move, but cannot rotate. This behavior was not previously observed in bulk glasses.

Then the experts changed the concentration of particles in the suspensions and tracked the movement of the particles using confocal microscopy. They noted that at certain densities, the rotational motion is frozen, but the translational motion is preserved. This leads to glassy states where the particles are grouped together to form local structures with a similar orientation. So the researchers observed two competing glass transitions - regular phase transformation and nonequilibrium phase transformation - interacting with each other.

The results suggest that such dynamics can work in other glass-forming systems. This can help shed light on the behavior of complex systems and molecules. It also potentially influences the development of liquid crystal devices.

Source: https://mir24.tv/

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