Organic Glass-Forming Liquids and the Concept of Fragility

An important category of glass-forming materials is organic; it includes molecular liquids, polymers, solutions, proteins that can be vitrified by cooling the liquid under standard conditions or after special thermal treatments. The range of applications is large from materials to life sciences and...

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Main Author: Alba-Simionesco, Christiane
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Académie des sciences 2023-08-01
Series:Comptes Rendus. Physique
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Online Access:https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/physique/articles/10.5802/crphys.148/
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author Alba-Simionesco, Christiane
author_facet Alba-Simionesco, Christiane
author_sort Alba-Simionesco, Christiane
collection DOAJ
description An important category of glass-forming materials is organic; it includes molecular liquids, polymers, solutions, proteins that can be vitrified by cooling the liquid under standard conditions or after special thermal treatments. The range of applications is large from materials to life sciences and recently to electronics. To distinguish them from other systems described in this issue, some specific properties such as the range of their glass transition temperature ($T_g$), their ability to vitrify and some rules of thumb to locate $T_g$ are presented. The most remarkable property of these liquids is how fast in temperature their viscosity or structural relaxation time increases as approaching $T_g$. To characterize this behavior and rank the liquids of different strength, C.A. Angell introduced the concept of Fragility nearly $40$ years ago. He proposed to classify liquids as fragile or strong in an Arrhenius plot with $T_g$ scaling (the strongest ones have never being observed in organic glasses, except for water under specific conditions). The $T_g$ value and the fragility index of a given liquid can be changed by applying pressure, i.e. changing the density. One can then explore the properties of the supercooled/overcompressed liquid and the glass in a $P-T$ phase diagram. The $T_g$ line corresponds to an isochronic line, i.e. a line at constant relaxation time for different pairs of density-temperature. We observe that all data can be placed on master-curves that depend only on a single density- and species-dependent and T-independent effective interaction energy, $E_{\infty }(\rho )$. An isochoric fragility index is defined as an intrinsic property of a given liquid, that can help in rationalizing all the correlations between the glass properties below $T_g$ and the viscous slowing down just above $T_g$ from which they are made. Geometrical confinement of liquids is also a way to modify the dynamics of a liquid and the properties of a glass; it corresponds to a large number of situations encountered in nature. Another phase diagram $T-d$ (d defining pore size) can be defined with a non-trivial pore size dependence of the glass transition, which is also strongly affected by surface interactions.
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spelling doaj-art-53ef2ed45eac4ba0adb1a92a2873a6b72025-02-07T13:52:27ZengAcadémie des sciencesComptes Rendus. Physique1878-15352023-08-0124S117719810.5802/crphys.14810.5802/crphys.148Organic Glass-Forming Liquids and the Concept of FragilityAlba-Simionesco, Christiane0Laboratoire Léon Brillouin, Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, FranceAn important category of glass-forming materials is organic; it includes molecular liquids, polymers, solutions, proteins that can be vitrified by cooling the liquid under standard conditions or after special thermal treatments. The range of applications is large from materials to life sciences and recently to electronics. To distinguish them from other systems described in this issue, some specific properties such as the range of their glass transition temperature ($T_g$), their ability to vitrify and some rules of thumb to locate $T_g$ are presented. The most remarkable property of these liquids is how fast in temperature their viscosity or structural relaxation time increases as approaching $T_g$. To characterize this behavior and rank the liquids of different strength, C.A. Angell introduced the concept of Fragility nearly $40$ years ago. He proposed to classify liquids as fragile or strong in an Arrhenius plot with $T_g$ scaling (the strongest ones have never being observed in organic glasses, except for water under specific conditions). The $T_g$ value and the fragility index of a given liquid can be changed by applying pressure, i.e. changing the density. One can then explore the properties of the supercooled/overcompressed liquid and the glass in a $P-T$ phase diagram. The $T_g$ line corresponds to an isochronic line, i.e. a line at constant relaxation time for different pairs of density-temperature. We observe that all data can be placed on master-curves that depend only on a single density- and species-dependent and T-independent effective interaction energy, $E_{\infty }(\rho )$. An isochoric fragility index is defined as an intrinsic property of a given liquid, that can help in rationalizing all the correlations between the glass properties below $T_g$ and the viscous slowing down just above $T_g$ from which they are made. Geometrical confinement of liquids is also a way to modify the dynamics of a liquid and the properties of a glass; it corresponds to a large number of situations encountered in nature. Another phase diagram $T-d$ (d defining pore size) can be defined with a non-trivial pore size dependence of the glass transition, which is also strongly affected by surface interactions.https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/physique/articles/10.5802/crphys.148/molecular liquids and glassespolymersfragilitydensity scalingcorrelations
spellingShingle Alba-Simionesco, Christiane
Organic Glass-Forming Liquids and the Concept of Fragility
Comptes Rendus. Physique
molecular liquids and glasses
polymers
fragility
density scaling
correlations
title Organic Glass-Forming Liquids and the Concept of Fragility
title_full Organic Glass-Forming Liquids and the Concept of Fragility
title_fullStr Organic Glass-Forming Liquids and the Concept of Fragility
title_full_unstemmed Organic Glass-Forming Liquids and the Concept of Fragility
title_short Organic Glass-Forming Liquids and the Concept of Fragility
title_sort organic glass forming liquids and the concept of fragility
topic molecular liquids and glasses
polymers
fragility
density scaling
correlations
url https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/physique/articles/10.5802/crphys.148/
work_keys_str_mv AT albasimionescochristiane organicglassformingliquidsandtheconceptoffragility