Pressure and Time Dependences of the Supercooled Liquid-to-Liquid Transition in Sulfur

Abstract

Thermal behavior of bulk amorphous sulfur is investigated by in situ temperature measurements at high pressures of 0.9, 1.4 and 2.1 GPa, and under different heating rates of 8, 10 and 12 K/min at 0.9 GPa. The results show that the onset temperature of the transition from the supercooled liquid to the liquid state for sulfur increases with the pressure and the heating rate. It is deduced that the transition does not follow the Clapeyron equation, indicating considerable coupling of the molecular structure change in the transition. Along with the data at ambient pressure and high pressure, we present a dynamic diagram to demonstrate the relationship between the amorphous solid, supercooled liquid, liquid, and crystal phases of sulfur, and suggest an experimental approach to establish pressure–temperature–time transition diagrams for supercooled liquid and liquid.