Extensive studies on polymer thin films to date have revealed their interesting but unusual properties such as film thickness dependence of glass transition temperature Tg and thermal expansivity. Recent studies have shown that the lower Tg is not always related to the higher mobility in polymer thin films, which contradicts our current understanding of the glass transition process. In this wor...

We study the phase transition of the ±J Heisenberg model in three dimensions. Using a dynamical simulation method that removes a drift of the system, the existence of the spin-glass (SG) phase at low temperatures is suggested. The transition temperature is estimated to be T SG ∼ 0.18J from both equilibrium and off-equilibrium Monte-Carlo simulations. Our result contradicts the chirality mechani...

The dynamics of glass is of importance in materials science but its nature has not yet been fully understood. Here we report that a verification of the temperature dependencies of the primary relaxation time or viscosity in the ultraslowing/ultraviscous domain of glass-forming systems can be carried out via the analysis of the inverse of the Dyre-Olsen temperature index. The subsequent analysis...

We employ dielectric spectroscopy to monitor the relaxation dynamics and crystallization kinetics of the Biclotymol antiseptic in its amorphous phase. The glass transition temperature of the material as determined by dielectric spectroscopy is Tg = 290 ± 1K. The primary (α) relaxation dynamics is observed to follow a Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann temperature dependence, with a kinetic fragility index m...

When a liquid is cooled below its melting temperature, it usually crystallizes. However, if the quenching rate is fast enough, the system may remain in a disordered state, progressively losing its fluidity upon further cooling. When the time needed for the rearrangement of the local atomic structure reaches approximately 100 seconds, the system becomes "solid" for any practical purpose, and thi...

T he glass transition, in which materials become so viscous that they cannot flow even on extremely long time scales, has baffled scientists for over one hundred years. Experiments have shown that the viscosity can increase in atomic and polymeric liquids by more than 15 orders of magnitude—think of going from the viscosity of water to that of asphalt—over a narrow range of decreasing temperatu...

We have considered the two-spin interaction spherical spin-glass model with asymmet-ric bonds (coupling constants). Besides the usual interactions between spins and bonds and between the spins and a thermostat with temperature T σ there is also an additional factor: the bonds are not assumed random a priori but interact with some other thermostat at the temperature T J. We show that when the bo...

Most low water content or frozen food products are partly or fully amorphous. This review will discuss the extent to which it is possible to understand and predict their behavior during processing and storage, on the basis of glass transition temperature values (Tg) and phenomena related to glass transition. Two main conclusions are provisionally proposed. Firstly, glass transition cannot be co...

As the glass transition is approached from the high temperature side, viewed as a liquid, the properties of the ever more viscous supercooled liquid are continuous functions of temperature and pressure. The point at which we decide to classify the fluid as a solid is therefore subjective. This subjective decision does, however, have discontinuous consequences for how we determine the rheologica...

A full mean-field solution of a quantum Heisenberg spin-glass model is presented in a large- N limit. A spin-glass transition is found for all values of the spin S. The quantum critical regime associated with the quantum transition at S = 0 and the various regimes in the spin-glass phase at high spin are analyzed. The specific heat is shown to vanish linearly with temperature. In the spin-glass...