Predicting nonlinear physical aging of glasses from equilibrium relaxation via the material time.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35294250.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abl9809 and PMC identifier 8926348.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The noncrystalline glassy state of matter plays a role in virtually all fields of materials science and offers complementary properties to those of the crystalline counterpart. The caveat of the glassy state is that it is out of equilibrium and therefore exhibits physical aging, i.e., material properties change over time. For half a century, the physical aging of glasses has been known to be described well by the material-time concept, although the existence of a material time has never been directly validated. We do this here by successfully predicting the aging of the molecular glass 4-vinyl-1,3-dioxolan-2-one from its linear relaxation behavior. This establishes the defining property of the material time. Via the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, our results imply that physical aging can be predicted from thermal-equilibrium fluctuation data, which is confirmed by computer simulations of a binary liquid mixture.