Glasses articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    3D-printed glass holds great potential. However, it is challenging to control both the dimension and the resolution of the printed material. Here, authors present a one-photon 3D printing approach to produce high-performance fused silica glass with sub-micron resolution and millimetric dimensions.

    • Ziyong Li
    • , Yanwen Jia
    •  & Xiewen Wen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Power-law scaling of low-frequency vibrational density of states is widely observed in glassy materials, yet the value of scaling exponents remains controversial. Here, Xu et al. identify two scaling exponents by separating stable from unstable glass to reconcile the debate in the literature.

    • Ding Xu
    • , Shiyun Zhang
    •  & Ning Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about how the states in glass are connected to each other. Here, the authors perform molecular dynamics simulation of relaxation in a prototypical metallic glass to show that the energy barriers separating these states are very low, and even be overcome by quantum fluctuations.

    • Leo Zella
    • , Jaeyun Moon
    •  & Takeshi Egami

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phosphor-glass composites can serve as efficient and stable photonic converters, but their synthesis generally requires harsh and time-consuming procedures. Here, the authors report an alternative synthesis route that requires only a few seconds and is based on particle self-stabilization.

    • Yongsheng Sun
    • , Yuzhen Wang
    •  & Zhiguo Xia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is still challenging to study the atomistic mechanism of inelastic deformation in metallic glasses owing to their amorphous structure. Here, the authors report an anomalous temperature dependence of the onset of plasticity in metallic glasses at low temperature.

    • Yifan Wang
    • , Jing Liu
    •  & Wei Cai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An abnormal stress memory effect is discovered in different types of glassy materials when they are subjected to a low strain after a high strain. This strategy can be used to depress the stress relaxation and increase the stability under loading.

    • Yu Tong
    • , Lijian Song
    •  & Jun-Qiang Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How matter deform is a central question in mechanics of materials science. Here, the authors reveal a size-dependent deformation in amorphous metals changing at ~100 nanometer sample size from collective homogeneous flow to interface diffusion realized through individual atomic transport.

    • Naijia Liu
    • , Sungwoo Sohn
    •  & Jan Schroers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The understanding of quantum effects in electronic crystallization is limited. Murase et al. report spatio-temporal dynamics in an organic material, with distinct nucleation and growth signatures, demonstrating larger growth rates than in the classical case due to quantum nature of electrons.

    • Hideaki Murase
    • , Shunto Arai
    •  & Kazushi Kanoda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding glass transition would rely on the knowledge of the structural ordering upon slow cooling in the absence of crystallization or phase separation. The authors identify exotic compositional order, not accompanied by any thermodynamic signature, directly impacts the structural relaxation dynamics.

    • Hua Tong
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The sample size dependence of the glass transition in metallic glasses has hitherto remained elusive. Here, the authors show that, reducing sample size below 10 μm, the glass transition temperature can be depressed by as much as 40 K, thereby allowing attaining glasses with low energy states.

    • Valerio Di Lisio
    • , Isabella Gallino
    •  & Daniele Cangialosi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Silica glass is a high-performance material used in most branches of society from glassware and windows to optical lenses and fibers. Here, we develop a sintering-free method for 3D printing silica glass with sub-micrometer resolution and successfully demonstrate an optical microtoroid resonator.

    • Po-Han Huang
    • , Miku Laakso
    •  & Frank Niklaus

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Identifying topological defects in disordered materials has a profound effect on predicting when and where the material will break. Matteo Baggioli comments a recent publication in Nature Communications, which confirms the existence of defects in glasses and their crucial role for plasticity.

    • Matteo Baggioli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It remains challenging to understand the relation between mechanical properties of glasses close to the yielding point and plastic behaviors at microscales. Wu et al. examine the plasticity using topological properties of the vibrational modes and identify a correlation between defects and plastic events.

    • Zhen Wei Wu
    • , Yixiao Chen
    •  & Limei Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Paracrystalline state is still challenging to reach in alloy systems in a controlled manner. Here, the authors present an atomic-level tailoring route to create paracrystalline Zr-Nb-Hf-Ta-Mo high-entropy alloy through local amorphization induced by atomic-level Pt with negative mixing enthalpy.

    • Xingjia He
    • , Yu Zhang
    •  & Weitao Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanism governing structural relaxation in metallic glasses remains elusive, hampering their stability and engineering applications. Here, the authors reveal a distinct relaxation mechanism with a stretching exponent of 3/7, providing new insight for understanding the nature of glass.

    • Yi-Tao Sun
    • , Rui Zhao
    •  & Wei-Hua Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fragility describes the sharpness of dynamical arrest of a melt at its glass transition, yet its structural origin remains elusive. Shi et al. show that fragility inversely correlates with the medium-range order structure characterized by a measurable parameter named the average medium-range distance.

    • Ying Shi
    • , Binghui Deng
    •  & Douglas C. Allan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The melting process in glasses is not fully understood. Experiments with colloidal glasses now show that during melting, a liquid film develops at the surface, below which a region forms with highly mobile particles. This surface glassy layer reflects the properties of the surface and the underlying bulk material.

    • Li Tian
    •  & Clemens Bechinger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In metallic liquids, the fragility is difficult to predict and measure. Here, the authors present the film inflation method, which reveals large fragility variations across Mg–Cu–Y, and introduce the crystallization complexity as additional contribution to glass forming ability.

    • Sebastian A. Kube
    • , Sungwoo Sohn
    •  & Jan Schroers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experiments with high-molecular-weight polystyrene provide insights into the mechanisms behind rotational-translational decoupling in glassy systems. Specifically, particularly mobile molecules exhibiting anisotropic trajectories are found to play a key role in Debye-Stokes-Einstein breakdown.

    • Nicole L. Mandel
    • , Soohyun Lee
    •  & Laura J. Kaufman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Glass-to-glass transitions can help understanding the glass nature, but it remains difficult to tune metallic glasses into significantly different glass states. Here the authors demonstrate the high-entropy effects in glass-to-glass transitions of high-entropy metallic glasses.

    • Hengwei Luan
    • , Xin Zhang
    •  & Ke-Fu Yao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Length scale dependence is important for understanding the collective relaxation dynamics in glass-forming liquids. Here, the authors find in liquid Ca0.4K0.6(NO3)1.4 a change in the dominant relaxation mechanisms around 2.6 Å, below which the relaxation process exhibits a temperature independent distribution and more Arrhenius-like behavior.

    • Peng Luo
    • , Yanqin Zhai
    •  & Y Z

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding of the atomic-scale mechanisms of rejuvenation of bulk metallic glass still remains unclear. Here, using configurational entropy derived from X-ray experiments, authors show a clear picture of the relaxation process during annealing of a metallic glass.

    • Florian Spieckermann
    • , Daniel Şopu
    •  & Jürgen Eckert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Strain glass is a new glassy state characterized by frozen ferroelastic nanodomains. Here, the authors discover a low-temperature feature in the specific heat of a strain glass, which is similar to the well-known boson peak anomaly of structural glasses, but cannot be explained by existing mechanisms.

    • Shuai Ren
    • , Hong-Xiang Zong
    •  & Wei-Hua Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The inverse design of the material for given target property is challenging for glasses due to their disordered non-prototypical structure. Wang and Zhang propose a data-driven property oriented inverse approach for design of glassy materials with desired functionalities.

    • Qi Wang
    •  & Longfei Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Glass is indispensable but its processing options are limited. Here the authors extend origami techniques to shaping three-dimensional transparent glass by introducing physical cavitation and chemical dynamic bond exchange in the pre-glass polymer-silica nanocomposites.

    • Yang Xu
    • , Ye Li
    •  & Tao Xie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The reduction in thermal conductivity is usually achieved by increasing the scattering rate or localization of heat carriers. Here, the authors propose a mechanism to suppress the thermal transport in amorphous systems such as SiTe binary alloys via tailoring the cross-linking network between the atoms.

    • Kiumars Aryana
    • , Derek A. Stewart
    •  & Patrick E. Hopkins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The competition between the formation of different phases and their kinetics need to be clearly understood to make materials with on-demand and multifaceted properties. Here, the authors reveal, by a combination of complementary in situ techniques, the mechanism of a Cu-Zr-Al metallic glass’s high propensity for metastable phase formation, which is partially through a kinetic mechanism of Al partitioning.

    • Jiri Orava
    • , Shanoob Balachandran
    •  & Ivan Kaban

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fragmentation of breaking glass as a brittle solid is a problem of equal practical and theoretical importance. Kooij et al. demonstrate that the fragment size distribution can surprisingly be both, either power-law or exponential, depending on how a particular specimen is broken.

    • Stefan Kooij
    • , Gerard van Dalen
    •  & Daniel Bonn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The static and dynamic behavior of condensed phases residing on curved surfaces can be fundamentally different from their counterparts in Euclidean space. Singh et al. test several competing glass theories on colloidal liquids confined to the surface of a sphere and show they behave like 3D bulk liquids.

    • Navneet Singh
    • , A. K. Sood
    •  & Rajesh Ganapathy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Glass materials are solid, like crystals, but lack long-range order, whilst the origin of their solidity remains elusive. Tong et al. show that the emergent solidity of glasses is induced by self-organization of percolation of force-bearing network appeared at the non-equilibrium glass transition upon cooling.

    • Hua Tong
    • , Shiladitya Sengupta
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Supercooled liquids near the glass transition show remarkable non-Arrhenius transport phenomena, whose origin is yet to be clarified. Here, the authors use GPU molecular dynamics simulations for various binary mixtures in the supercooled regime to show the validity of a quasiuniversal excess-entropy scaling relation for viscosity and diffusion.

    • Ian H. Bell
    • , Jeppe C. Dyre
    •  & Trond S. Ingebrigtsen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metal-organic framework glasses are gaining interest, but large samples are difficult to fabricate and mechanical properties are not well understood. Here, the authors use experiments and simulations to assess fracture toughness and flexural strength of a zeolitic imidazolate framework glass.

    • Theany To
    • , Søren S. Sørensen
    •  & Morten M. Smedskjaer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The glass transition temperature (Tg) is a key property that dictates the applicability of conjugated polymers. Here the authors use one adjustable parameter to build a relationship between the Tg and the molecular structure of semiflexible polymers that differ in aromatic backbone and alkyl side chain chemistry.

    • Renxuan Xie
    • , Albree R. Weisen
    •  & Enrique D. Gomez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While metallic glasses are expected to have tunable structures, these have rarely been demonstrated. Here, the authors combine temperature and pressure to show a two-way structural tuning in rare earth-based metallic glasses beyond the nearest-neighbor atomic shells.

    • Hongbo Lou
    • , Zhidan Zeng
    •  & Qiaoshi Zeng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Glass transition in soft materials can be affected by the topology of constituent particles, but the detail remains elusive. Here, Smrek et al. show that the interplay between circular topology of ring polymers and their active segments generates a new state of matter, namely active topological glass.

    • Jan Smrek
    • , Iurii Chubak
    •  & Kurt Kremer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The glass-forming materials exhibit dynamical slowing down together with spatial heterogeneity at microscales, but their origin remains debated. Tong and Tanaka show that this phenomenon can be unified based on a structural order parameter capable of detecting subtle ordering in instantaneous liquid states.

    • Hua Tong
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The coarsening of amorphous metallic nanoparticles remains poorly understood. Here, the authors combine high resolution microscopy and atomistic simulations to show the disordered structure of amorphous nanoparticles makes them coarsen faster than crystalline ones.

    • Yuan Tian
    • , Wei Jiao
    •  & Mingwei Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The nature of the defects in amorphous materials, analogous to vacancies and dislocations in crystals, remains a matter of debate. Scalliet et al. show that localized and extended defects coexist in a wide range of conditions, yet are associated with distinct energy scales in a prototypical glass model.

    • Camille Scalliet
    • , Ludovic Berthier
    •  & Francesco Zamponi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thermal annealing of metallic glasses is known to cause a universal increase of the relaxation time with sample age. Here, however, the authors show how a mechanical stress disrupts this universal response, leading to highly non-monotonous structural dynamics with time.

    • Amlan Das
    • , Peter M. Derlet
    •  & Robert Maaß

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The formation of composite materials has been widely exploited to alter the chemical and physical properties of their components. Here the authors form metal–organic framework (MOF) crystal–glass composites in which a MOF glass matrix stabilises the open pore structure of MIL-53, leading to enhanced CO2 adsorption.

    • Jingwei Hou
    • , Christopher W. Ashling
    •  & Thomas D. Bennett

Browse broader subjects

Browse Glasses across other nature.com journals