Influence of the glass transition on the liquid-gas spinodal decomposition

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to explore how the glass transition affects liquid-gas phase separation, revealing a shift from diffusive to slow, heterogeneous dynamics as temperature decreases.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the microscopic mechanisms governing phase separation across the glass transition, highlighting the change in coarsening dynamics.

Findings

Transition from diffusive to heterogeneous dynamics

Logarithmically slow domain growth at low temperatures

Dependence of microscopic mechanisms on temperature

Abstract

We use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to study the kinetics of the liquid-gas phase separation if the temperature is lowered across the glass transition of the dense phase. We observe a gradual change from phase separated systems at high temperatures to nonequilibrium, gel-like structures that evolve very slowly at low temperatures. The microscopic mechanisms responsible for the coarsening strongly depend on temperature, and change from diffusive motion at high temperature to a strongly intermittent, heterogeneous and thermally activated dynamics at low temperature, leading to logarithmically slow growth of the typical domain size.