Glass Transitions and Critical Points in Orientationally Disordered Crystals and Structural Glassformers: "Strong" Liquids are More Interesting Than We Thought

When liquids are classified using Tg -scaled Arrhenius plots of relaxation times (or relative rates of entropy increase above Tg) across a "strong-fragile" spectrum of behaviors, the "strong" liquids have always appeared rather uninteresting [1, 2]. Here we use updated plots of the same type for crystal phases of the "rotator" variety [3] to confirm that the same pattern of behavior exists for these simpler (center of mass ordered) systems. However, in this case we can show that the "strong" systems owe their behavior to the existence of lambda-type order-disorder transitions at higher temperatures (directly observable in the cases where observations are not interrupted by prior melting). Furthermore, the same observation can be made for other systems in which the glass transition, at which the ordering is arrested, occurs in the thermodynamic ground state of the system. This prompts an enquiry into the behavior of strong liquids at high temperatures. Using the case of silica itself, we again find strong evidence from extended ion dynamics simulations, for a lambda transition at high temperatures, but only if pressure is adjusted to a critical value. In this case the lambda point is identifiable as a liquid-liquid critical point of the type suggested for supercooled water. We recognize the possibility of exploring, a postiori, the consequences of rapid cooling of laboratory liquid SiO2 from >5000K and multi-GPa pressures, using the phenomenology of damage-induced plasmas in optical fibers. The ramifications of these considerations will be explored to establish a "big picture"2 of the relation of thermodynamic transitions to supercooled liquid phenomenology [4, 5]

Tuning of tetrahedrality in a silicon potential yields a series of monatomic (metal-like) glassformers of very high fragility

We obtain monatomic glass formers in simulations by modifying the tetrahedral character in a silicon potential to explore a triple point zone between potentials favoring diamond (dc) and bcc crystals. dc crystallization is always preceded by a polyamorphic transformation of the liquid, and is frustrated when the Kauzmann temperature of the high temperature liquid intersects the liquid-liquid coexistence line. The glass forming liquids are extraordinarily fragile. Our results suggest that Si and Ge liquids may be vitrified at a pressure close to the diamond-beta-tin-liquid triple point.Comment: 12 pages, including 3 figures. This revised version covers the same as the original submission plus a discussion of the effect of the polyamorphic transformation on the glass formation ability of the tetrahedral liquids studie