Cooling-rate induced softening in a colloidal glass.

Contrary to crystalline solids, amorphous solids always become softer when vitrifying the melts under higher cooling rates. Understanding this phenomenon is of utmost importance in providing a basis for the mechanical-performance control of amorphous solids. However, the underlying mechanisms leading to this cooling-rate-induced softening of amorphous solids have remained elusive, especially the dynamic reasons are neglected. Here, we use a colloidal glass as the model system to directly study this issue. Shear modulus is used as the representative parameter to monitor the stress-bearing properties of colloidal glass. The space-spanning immobile particles, whose population is sensitive to the cooling rate, are found to make the dominant contribution to the shear modulus. The rapid solidification induced softening of colloidal glass is observed to originate from fewer immobile particles formed at higher cooling rates.