Ideal glass transitions in thin films: An energy landscape perspective

Ideal glass transitions in thin films: An energy landscape perspective

Thomas M. Truskett & Venkat Ganesan Department of Chemical Engineering and Institute for Theoretical Chemistry, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712. Abstract We introduce a mean-field model for the potential energy landscape of a thin fluid film confined between parallel substrates. The model predicts how the number of accessible basins on the energy landscape and, consequently,...

Local and average glass transitions in polymer thin films

In the companion paper to this we presented a quantitative theory for the suppression of the glass transition in a thin polymer film. Our Delayed Glassification (DG) model follows a proposal by de Gennes that free volume can be transmitted from surface to film interior via kinks transported along molecular strands or loops. In this paper we use the DG model to predict the effects of molecular w...

Ideal glass transitions by random pinning.

We study the effect of freezing the positions of a fraction c of particles from an equilibrium configuration of a supercooled liquid at a temperature T. We show that within the random first-order transition theory pinning particles leads to an ideal glass transition for a critical fraction c = c(K)(T) even for moderate supercooling; e.g., close to the Mode-Coupling transition temperature. First...

transitions - energy landscape distinctions

Energy landscape scheme for an intuitive understanding of complex domain dynamics in ferroelectric thin films

Fundamental understanding of domain dynamics in ferroic materials has been a longstanding issue because of its relevance to many systems and to the design of nanoscale domain-wall devices. Despite many theoretical and experimental studies, a full understanding of domain dynamics still remains incomplete, partly due to complex interactions between domain-walls and disorder. We report domain-shap...