Glass and other relaxations in liquids

Abstract

The thermodynamics and relaxational behaviour of viscous liquids as they approach the glass transition can be duplicated by assuming quasi-independent units in the liquid of several hundred molecules, which below some characteristic temperature occur in potential energy minima. The form of the distribution of the number of minima as a function of their depth is inferred from the thermodynamics and is capable of accounting qualitatively for the temperature dependence of viscosity and relaxation, the behaviour of relaxation time spectra and the occurrence of a secondary (β) relaxation as well.