Emergence and percolation of rigid domains during the colloidal glass transition

Yang, Xiaokun; Tong, Hua; Chen, Ke

doi:10.1103/physreve.99.062610

Cited by 19 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…1 c indicates that our simulations have accessed nonequilibrium glass transition with T g lying both above and below the mode-coupling temperature. This is comparable to the dynamic range covered by present-day colloidal experiments 69 , 70 .…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 81%

Emergent solidity of amorphous materials as a consequence of mechanical self-organisation

2020

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Amorphous solids have peculiar properties distinct from crystals. One of the most fundamental mysteries is the emergence of solidity in such nonequilibrium, disordered state without the protection by long-range translational order. A jammed system at zero temperature, although marginally stable, has solidity stemming from the space-spanning force network, which gives rise to the long-range stress correlation. Here, we show that such nonlocal correlation already appears at the nonequilibrium glass transition upon cooling. This is surprising since we also find that the system suffers from giant anharmonic fluctuations originated from the fractal-like potential energy landscape. We reveal that it is the percolation of the force-bearing network that allows long-range stress transmission even under such circumstance. Thus, the emergent solidity of amorphous materials is a consequence of nontrivial self-organisation of the disordered mechanical architecture. Our findings point to the significance of understanding amorphous solids and nonequilibrium glass transition from a mechanical perspective.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 81%

Emergent solidity of amorphous materials as a consequence of mechanical self-organisation

2020

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“…Indeed, the temperature-driven amorphous transformations in liquid H 2 O from the high to low density has been explained in these terms. The same has been argued for the glass transition in model systems [35][36][37] and seems also compatible with recent experimental observations [38]. The second one states that with pressure or temperature, the local coordination of materials built of polyhedra can evolve successively from low to high coordination through a series of percolation transitions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Percolation transitions in compressed SiO2 glasses

Hasmy

Ispas

Hehlen

2021

Preprint

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Amorphous-amorphous transformations under pressure are generally explained by changes in the local structure from low to higher fold coordinated polyhedra [1-4]. However, as the notion of scale invariance at the critical thresholds has not been addressed, it is still unclear whether these transformations could be associated to true phase transitions. Here we report ab initio based calculations of compressed silica (SiO2) glasses showing that the structural changes from low- to high-density amorphous structures occur through a sequence of percolation transitions. When the pressure is increased up to 82 GPa, a series of long range ('infinite') percolating clusters built up by corner- or edge-shared tetrahedra, pentahedra, and eventually octahedra, emerge at some critical pressures and replace the previous phase of lower fold coordinated polyhedra and lower connectivity. This mechanism provides a natural explanation for the well-known mechanical anomaly around 3 GPa as well as for the structural irreversibility beyond 10 GPa, among others. Some of the amorphous structures that have been discovered mimic those of coesite IV and V crystals reported recently [5,6], highlighting the major role of SiO5 pentahedra-based polyamorphs in the densification process of vitreous silica. Our observations demonstrate that the percolation theory provides a robust framework to understand the nature and the pathway of the amorphous-amorphous transformations, and open a new avenue to predict unraveled amorphous solid phases and related liquids [7,8].

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“…In contrast to this, colloidal suspensions not only share typical features with normal glass-forming liquids but also have the big advantage that the trajectories of the constituent colloid particles can be directly tracked by optical imaging, therefore allowing a detailed analysis of the system's dynamics on the particle level [4]. As a result, in recent years colloidal suspensions have been widely used as model glass-forming systems in experiments and have provided insightful results on the physics of glass formation [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are strongly confined colloids good models for two dimensional liquids?

Tian,

Kob,

Barrat

2022

Preprint

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Quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) colloidal hard-sphere suspensions confined in a slit geometry are widely used as two dimensional (2D) model systems in experiments that probe the glassy relaxation dynamics of 2D systems. However, the question to what extent these quasi-2D systems indeed represent 2D systems is rarely brought up. Here, we use computer simulations that take into account hydrodynamic interactions to show that dense quasi-2D colloidal bi-disperse hard-sphere suspensions exhibit much more rapid diffusion and relaxation than their 2D counterparts at the same area fraction. This difference is induced by the additional vertical space in the quasi-2D samples in which the small colloids can move out of the 2D plane, therefore allowing overlap between particles in the projected trajectories. Surprisingly, this difference in the dynamics can be accounted for if, instead of using the surface density, one characterizes the systems by means of a suitable structural quantity related to the radial distribution function. This implies that in the two geometries the relevant physics for glass-formation is essentially identical. Our results provide not only practical implications on 2D colloidal experiments but also interesting insights into the 3D-to-2D crossover in glass-forming systems.

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Emergence and percolation of rigid domains during the colloidal glass transition

Cited by 19 publications

References 64 publications

Emergent solidity of amorphous materials as a consequence of mechanical self-organisation

Emergent solidity of amorphous materials as a consequence of mechanical self-organisation

Percolation transitions in compressed SiO2 glasses

Are strongly confined colloids good models for two dimensional liquids?

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