Real-time observation of the isothermal crystallization kinetics in a deeply supercooled liquid.

ABSTRACT: Below the melting temperature T_m, crystals are the stable phase of typical elemental or molecular systems. However, cooling down a liquid below T_m, crystallization is anything but inevitable. The liquid can be supercooled, eventually forming a glass below the glass transition temperature T_g. Despite their long lifetimes and the presence of strong barriers that produces an apparent stability, supercooled liquids and glasses remain intrinsically a metastable state and thermodynamically unstable towards the crystal. Here we investigated the isothermal crystallization kinetics of the prototypical strong glassformer GeO₂ in the deep supercooled liquid at 1100 K, about half-way between T_m and T_g. The crystallization process has be

SUBMITTER: Zanatta M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5334641 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature