1Department of Physics, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062 2Department of Chemistry, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433 3Key Laboratory for Computational Physical Sciences (MOE), State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433 4Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing 210093
Abstract：In order to understand the long-standing problem of the nature of glass states, we perform intensive simulations on the thermodynamic properties and potential energy surface of an ideal glass. It is found that the atoms of an ideal glass manifest cooperative diffusion, and show clearly different behavior from the liquid state. By determining the potential energy surface, we demonstrate that the glass state has a flat potential landscape, which is the critical intrinsic feature of ideal glasses. When this potential region is accessible through any thermal or kinetic process, the glass state can be formed and a glass transition will occur, regardless of any special structural character. With this picture, the glass transition can be interpreted by the emergence of configurational entropies, as a consequence of flat potential landscapes.
2017, Vol. 34 
