Supercooled liquids with enhanced orientational order

Simona Capponi, Simone Napolitano () and Michael Wübbenhorst
Additional contact information
Simona Capponi: Laboratory of Acoustics and Thermal Physics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Simone Napolitano: Laboratory of Polymer and Soft Matter Dynamics, Faculté des Sciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Boulevard du Triomphe, Bâtiment NO
Michael Wübbenhorst: Laboratory of Acoustics and Thermal Physics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Nature Communications, 2012, vol. 3, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract The nature of the glass transition, the transformation of a liquid into a disordered solid, still remains one of the most intriguing unsolved problems in materials science. Recent models rationalize crucial features of vitrification with the presence of medium-range ordered regions coexisting with the isotropic liquid. Here, in line with this prediction, we report an extraordinary enhancement in bond orientational order in ultrathin films of supercooled polyols, grown by physical vapour deposition. By varying the deposition conditions and the molecular size, we could tune the kinetic stability of the liquid phase enriched in bond orientational order towards conversion into the ordinary liquid phase. We observed a strong increase in the dielectric strength with respect to the ordinary supercooled liquid and slower structural dynamics, suggesting the existence of a metastable liquid phase with improved orientational correlations.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2228 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:3:y:2012:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2228

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2228

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().