Sun Gang, Harrowell Peter
School of Chemistry, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
J Chem Phys. 2022 Jul 14;157(2):024501. doi: 10.1063/5.0094386.
The persistent problem posed by the glass transition is to develop a general atomic level description of amorphous solidification. The answer proposed in this paper is to measure a configuration's capacity to restrain the motion of the constituent atoms. Here, we show that the instantaneous normal modes can be used to define a measure of atomic restraint that accounts for the difference between fragile and strong liquids and the collective length scale of the supercooled liquid. These results represent a significant simplification of the description of amorphous solidification and provide a powerful systematic treatment of the influence of microscopic factors on the formation of an amorphous solid.
