The Ultimate Fate of Supercooled Liquids

TL;DR

This paper explores how the interplay between the growing dynamical length scale and decreasing crystal nucleus size in supercooled liquids leads to a new crystallization mechanism, explaining several phenomena near the glass transition.

Contribution

It introduces a novel crystallization mechanism driven by the interplay of length scales, providing explanations for unexplained phenomena in supercooled liquids near T_g.

Findings

A new crystallization mechanism emerges when {} > {}_M.

The web of crystallinity percolates at low temperatures, affecting observable phenomena.

Residual effects near T_g explain Fischer clusters and anomalous crystal growth.

Abstract

In recent years it has become widely accepted that a dynamical length scale {\xi}_{\alpha} plays an important role in supercooled liquids near the glass transition. We examine the implications of the interplay between the growing {\xi}_{\alpha} and the size of the crystal nucleus, {\xi}_M, which shrinks on cooling. We argue that at low temperatures where {\xi}_{\alpha} > {\xi}_M a new crystallization mechanism emerges enabling rapid development of a large scale web of sparsely connected crystallinity. Though we predict this web percolates the system at too low a temperature to be easily seen in the laboratory, there are noticeable residual effects near the glass transition that can account for several previously observed unexplained phenomena of deeply supercooled liquids including Fischer clusters, and anomalous crystal growth near T_g.