Nanowerk August 22, 2022
Extensive studies on the structure and relaxation dynamics of glasses have constructed the current classical picture: glasses consist of some ‘soft zones’ of loosely bound atoms embedded in a tightly bound atomic matrix. Recent experiments have found an additional fast process in the relaxation spectra, but the underlying physics of this process remains unclear. Researchers in China combined extensive dynamic experiments and computer simulations and found that the fast relaxation is associated with string-like diffusion of liquid-like atoms, which are inherited from the high-temperature liquids. Even at room temperature, some atoms in dense-packed metallic glasses can diffuse just as easily as they would in liquid states, with a viscosity as low as 107 Pa·s. According to the researchers their current microscopic picture of glass solids and might help establish the dynamics–property relationship of glasses…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Inheritance of string-like diffusion in the Al90La10 system. Credit: Nature Materials (2022)