On the possible existence of crystallites in glass-forming liquids

TL;DR

This paper hypothesizes that glass-forming liquids might contain large, well-defined crystallites that are difficult to detect due to frozen-in stresses and deformation, challenging traditional views on their structure.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that frozen-in stresses in ultraviscous liquids can stabilize large crystallites, providing a new perspective on the microscopic structure of glass-forming liquids.

Findings

Large crystallites may exist but are hard to detect experimentally.

Frozen-in stresses increase nucleation barriers in glass-forming liquids.

Crystallites could be deformed, complicating their observation.

Abstract

We speculate that glass-forming liquids may contain fairly large and well-defined crystallites. This is based on arguing that the slowly relaxing "frozen-in" stresses characterizing ultraviscous liquids increase the barrier for nucleation, thus allowing for larger unstable crystallites than otherwise possible. The frozen-in stresses also deform the crystallites, making their observation difficult; specifically it is argued that a situation where 1/N of the molecules form N X N X N crystallites would be hard to detect by standard X-ray or neutron scattering experiments.