Issue 34, 2021

Relaxation moduli of glass-forming systems: temperature effects and fluctuations

Abstract

Equilibrium and dynamical properties of a two-dimensional polydisperse colloidal model system are characterized by means of molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. We employed several methods to prepare quasi-equilibrated systems: in particular, by slow cooling and tempering with MD (method SC-MD), and by tempering with MC dynamics involving swaps of particle diameters (methods Sw-MD, Sw-MC). It is revealed that the Sw-methods are much more efficient for equilibration below the glass transition temperature Tg leading to denser and more rigid systems which show much slower self-diffusion and shear-stress relaxation than their counterparts prepared with the SC-MD method. The shear-stress relaxation modulus G(t) is obtained based on the classical stress-fluctuation relation. We demonstrate that the α-relaxation time τα obtained using a time-temperature superposition of G(t) shows a super-Arrhenius behavior with the VFT temperature T0 well below Tg. We also derive novel rigorous fluctuation relations providing isothermic and adiabatic compression relaxation moduli in the whole time range (including the short-time inertial regime) based on correlation data for thermostatted systems. It is also shown that: (i) the assumption of Gaussian statistics for stress fluctuations leads to accurate predictions of the variances of the fluctuation moduli for both shear (μF) and compression (ηF) at TTg. (ii) The long-time (quasi-static) isothermic and adiabatic moduli increase on cooling faster than the affine compression modulus ηA, and this leads to a monotonic temperature dependence of ηF which is qualitatively different from μF(T) showing a maximum near Tg.

Graphical abstract: Relaxation moduli of glass-forming systems: temperature effects and fluctuations

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
25 May 2021
Accepted
05 Jul 2021
First published
12 Jul 2021

Soft Matter, 2021,17, 7867-7892

Relaxation moduli of glass-forming systems: temperature effects and fluctuations

L. Klochko, J. Baschnagel, J. P. Wittmer and A. N. Semenov, Soft Matter, 2021, 17, 7867 DOI: 10.1039/D1SM00778E

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