Dynamic Model of Super-Arrhenius Relaxation Rates in Glassy Materials

Journal Article · Fri May 06 00:00:00 EDT 2005 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.175701· OSTI ID:20696245

Langer, J S; Lemaitre, Anaeel ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9530 (United States)

Super-Arrhenius relaxation rates in glassy materials can be associated with thermally activated rearrangements of increasing numbers of molecules at decreasing temperatures. We explore a model of such a mechanism in which stringlike fluctuations in the neighborhood of shear transformation zones provide routes along which rearrangements can propagate, and the entropy associated with critically long strings allows the rearrangement to be distributed stably in the surrounding material. We further postulate that, at low enough temperatures, these fluctuations are localized on the interfaces between frustration-limited domains, and in this way obtain a modified Vogel-Fulcher formula for the relaxation rate.

• OSTI ID: 20696245
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 94, Issue 17; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.175701; (c) 2005 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ENTROPY
FLUCTUATIONS
GLASS
INTERFACES
MOLECULES
PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS
RELAXATION