Evidence of dynamic crossover phenomena in water and other glass-forming liquids: experiments, MD simulations and theory

The Interplay between the Theories of Mode Coupling and of Percolation Transition in Attractive Colloidal Systems

In the recent years a considerable effort has been devoted to foster the understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying the dynamical arrest that is involved in glass forming in supercooled liquids and in the sol-gel transition. The elucidation of the nature of such processes represents one of the most challenging unsolved problems in the field of material science. In this context, two important theories have contributed significantly to the interpretation of these phenomena: the Mode-Coupling theory (MCT) and the Percolation theory (PT). These theories are rooted on the two pillars of statistical physics, universality and scale laws, and their original formulations have been subsequently modified to account for the fundamental concepts of Energy Landscape (EL) and of the universality of the fragile to strong dynamical crossover (FSC). In this review, we discuss experimental and theoretical results, including Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations, reported in the literature for colloidal and polymer systems displaying both glass and sol-gel transitions. Special focus is dedicated to the analysis of the interferences between these transitions and on the possible interplay between MCT and PT. By reviewing recent theoretical developments, we show that such interplay between sol-gel and glass transitions may be interpreted in terms of the extended F13 MCT model that describes these processes based on the presence of a glass-glass transition line terminating in an A3 cusp-like singularity (near which the logarithmic decay of the density correlator is observed). This transition line originates from the presence of two different amorphous structures, one generated by the inter-particle attraction and the other by the pure repulsion characteristic of hard spheres. We show here, combining literature results with some new results, that such a situation can be generated, and therefore experimentally studied, by considering colloidal-like particles interacting via a hard core plus an attractive square well potential. In the final part of this review, scaling laws associated both to MCT and PT are applied to describe, by means of these two theories, the specific viscoelastic properties of some systems.

Small Molecules, Non-Covalent Interactions, and Confinement

This review gives an overview of current trends in the investigation of small guest molecules, confined in neat and functionalized mesoporous silica materials by a combination of solid-state NMR and relaxometry with other physico-chemical techniques. The reported guest molecules are water, small alcohols, and carbonic acids, small aromatic and heteroaromatic molecules, ionic liquids, and surfactants. They are taken as characteristic role-models, which are representatives for the typical classes of organic molecules. It is shown that this combination delivers unique insights into the structure, arrangement, dynamics, guest-host interactions, and the binding sites in these confined systems, and is probably the most powerful analytical technique to probe these systems.

The Proton Density of States in Confined Water (H2O)

The hydrogen density of states (DOS) in confined water has been probed by inelastic neutron scattering spectra in a wide range of its P–T phase diagram. The liquid–liquid transition and the dynamical crossover from the fragile (super-Arrhenius) to strong (Arrhenius) glass forming behavior have been studied, by taking into account the system polymorphism in both the liquid and amorphous solid phases. The interest is focused in the low energy region of the DOS (E<10 meV) and the data are discussed in terms of the energy landscape (local minima of the potential energy) approach. In this latest research, we consider a unit scale energy (EC) linked to the water local order governed by the hydrogen bonding (HB). All the measured spectra, scaled according to such energy, evidence a universal power law behavior with different exponents (γ) in the strong and fragile glass forming regions, respectively. In the first case, the DOS data obey the Debye squared-frequency law, whereas, in the second one, we obtain a value predicted in terms of the mode-coupling theory (MCT) (γ≃1.6).

Nanoscale Dynamics and Transport in Highly Ordered Low-Dimensional Water

Highly ordered and highly cooperative water with properties of both solid and liquid states has been observed by means of neutron scattering in hydrophobic one-dimensional channels with van der Waals diameter of 0.78 nm. We have found that in the initial stages of adsorption water molecules occupy niches close to pore walls, followed later by the filling of the central pore area. Intensified by confinement, intermolecular water interactions lead to the formation of well-ordered hydrogen-bonded water chains and to the onset of cooperative vibrations. On the other hand, the same intermolecular interactions lead to two relaxation processes, the faster of which is the spontaneous position exchange between two water molecules placed 3.2-4 Å from each other. Self-diffusion in an axial pore direction is the result of those spontaneous random exchanges and is substantially slower than the self-diffusion in bulk water.

Identifying time scales for violation/preservation of Stokes-Einstein relation in supercooled water

The violation of the Stokes-Einstein (SE) relation D ~ (η/T)^-1 between the shear viscosity η and the translational diffusion constant D at temperature T is of great importance for characterizing anomalous dynamics of supercooled water. Determining which time scales play key roles in the SE violation remains elusive without the measurement of η. We provide comprehensive simulation results of the dynamic properties involving η and D in the TIP4P/2005 supercooled water. This enabled the thorough identification of the appropriate time scales for the SE relation Dη/T. In particular, it is demonstrated that the temperature dependence of various time scales associated with structural relaxation, hydrogen bond breakage, stress relaxation, and dynamic heterogeneities can be definitely classified into only two classes. That is, we propose the generalized SE relations that exhibit "violation" or "preservation." The classification depends on the examined time scales that are coupled or decoupled with the diffusion. On the basis of the classification, we explain the physical origins of the violation in terms of the increase in the plateau modulus and the nonexponentiality of stress relaxation. This implies that the mechanism of SE violation is attributed to the attained solidity upon supercooling, which is in accord with the growth of non-Gaussianity and spatially heterogeneous dynamics.

Crossover from equilibration to aging: Nonequilibrium theory versus simulations

Understanding glasses and the glass transition requires comprehending the nature of the crossover from the ergodic (or equilibrium) regime, in which the stationary properties of the system have no history dependence, to the mysterious glass transition region, where the measured properties are nonstationary and depend on the protocol of preparation. In this work we use nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to test the main features of the crossover predicted by the molecular version of the recently developed multicomponent nonequilibrium self-consistent generalized Langevin equation theory. According to this theory, the glass transition involves the abrupt passage from the ordinary pattern of full equilibration to the aging scenario characteristic of glass-forming liquids. The same theory explains that this abrupt transition will always be observed as a blurred crossover due to the unavoidable finiteness of the time window of any experimental observation. We find that within their finite waiting-time window, the simulations confirm the general trends predicted by the theory.

Confined Water as Model of Supercooled Water

Water in confined geometries has obvious relevance in biology, geology, and other areas where the material properties are strongly dependent on the amount and behavior of water in these types of materials. Another reason to restrict the size of water domains by different types of geometrical confinements has been the possibility to study the structural and dynamical behavior of water in the deeply supercooled regime (e.g., 150-230 K at ambient pressure), where bulk water immediately crystallizes to ice. In this paper we give a short review of studies with this particular goal. However, from these studies it is also clear that the interpretations of the experimental data are far from evident. Therefore, we present three main interpretations to explain the experimental data, and we discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately, none of the proposed scenarios is able to predict all the observations for supercooled and glassy bulk water, indicating that either the structural and dynamical alterations of confined water are too severe to make predictions for bulk water or the differences in how the studied water has been prepared (applied cooling rate, resulting density of the water, etc.) are too large for direct and quantitative comparisons.

Continuous and Discontinuous Dynamic Crossover in Supercooled Water in Computer Simulations

The dynamic crossover behavior of supercooled water as described by the first-principle based WAIL potential was investigated. Below the second liquid-liquid critical point, the viscosity shows a discontinuous jump consistent with a first-order phase transition between the high density liquid and the low density liquid. Above the critical point, a continuous transition occurs with only the first derivative of viscosity being discontinuous, and the dynamic crossover temperature is about 8 K below the thermodynamic switchover temperature. The 8 K shift can be explained by a delay in dynamic crossover, which does not occur until the more viscous liquid starts to dominate the population and jams the flow. On the basis of finite-size effects observed in our simulations, we believe that dynamic discontinuity may be observable above the critical point in confined water when the confinement is on a length scale shorter than the spatial correlation.

Liquid-liquid transition in a strong bulk metallic glass-forming liquid

Polymorphic phase transitions are common in crystalline solids. Recent studies suggest that phase transitions may also exist between two liquid forms with different entropy and structure. Such a liquid-liquid transition has been investigated in various substances including water, Al2O3-Y2O3 and network glass formers. However, the nature of liquid-liquid transition is debated due to experimental difficulties in avoiding crystallization and/or measuring at high temperatures/pressures. Here we report the thermodynamic and structural evidence of a temperature-induced weak first-order liquid-liquid transition in a bulk metallic glass-forming system Zr(41.2)Ti(13.8)Cu(12.5)Ni10Be(22.5) characterized by non- (or weak) directional bonds. Our experimental results suggest that the local structural changes during the transition induce the drastic viscosity changes without a detectable density anomaly. These changes are correlated with a heat capacity maximum in the liquid. Our findings support the hypothesis that the 'strong' kinetics (low fragility) of a liquid may arise from an underlying lambda transition above its glass transition.

Radical re-appraisal of water structure in hydrophilic confinement

The structure of water confined in MCM41 silica cylindrical pores is studied to determine whether confined water is simply a version of the bulk liquid which can be substantially supercooled without crystallisation. A combination of total neutron scattering from the porous silica, both wet and dry, and computer simulation using a realistic model of the scattering substrate is used. The water in the pore is divided into three regions: core, interfacial and overlap. The average local densities of water in these simulations are found to be about 20% lower than bulk water density, while the density in the core region is below, but closer to, the bulk density. There is a decrease in both local and core densities when the temperature is lowered from 298 K to 210 K. The radical proposal is made here that water in hydrophilic confinement is under significant tension, around -100 MPa, inside the pore.

The Boson peak in supercooled water

We perform extensive molecular dynamics simulations of the TIP4P/2005 model of water to investigate the origin of the Boson peak reported in experiments on supercooled water in nanoconfined pores, and in hydration water around proteins. We find that the onset of the Boson peak in supercooled bulk water coincides with the crossover to a predominantly low-density-like liquid below the Widom line TW. The frequency and onset temperature of the Boson peak in our simulations of bulk water agree well with the results from experiments on nanoconfined water. Our results suggest that the Boson peak in water is not an exclusive effect of confinement. We further find that, similar to other glass-forming liquids, the vibrational modes corresponding to the Boson peak are spatially extended and are related to transverse phonons found in the parent crystal, here ice Ih.

Water dynamics in a lithium chloride aqueous solution probed by Brillouin neutron and x-ray scattering

We studied the collective excitations in an aqueous solution of lithium chloride over the temperature range of 270-205 K using neutron and x-ray Brillouin scattering. Both neutron and x-ray experiments revealed the presence of low- and high-frequency excitations, similar to the low- and high-frequency excitations in pure water. These two excitations were detectable through the entire temperature range of the experiment, at all probed values of the scattering momentum transfer (0.2 Å(-1) < Q < 1.8 Å(-1)). A wider temperature range was investigated using elastic intensity neutron and x-ray scans. Clear evidence of the crossover in the dynamics of the water molecules in the solution was observed in the single-particle relaxational dynamics on the µeV (nanosecond) time scale, but not in the collective dynamics on the meV (picosecond) time scale.

Density profile of water confined in cylindrical pores in MCM-41 silica

Recently, water absorbed in the porous silica material MCM-41-S15 has been used to demonstrate an apparent fragile to strong dynamical crossover on cooling below ∼220 K, and also to claim that the density of confined water reaches a minimum at a temperature around 200 K. Both of these behaviours are purported to arise from the crossing of a Widom line above a conjectured liquid-liquid critical point in bulk water. Here it is shown that traditional estimates of the pore diameter in this porous silica material (of order 15 Å) are too small to allow the amount of water that is observed to be absorbed by these materials (around 0.5 g H(2)O/g substrate) to be absorbed only inside the pore. Either the additional water is absorbed on the surface of the silica particles and outside the pores, or else the pores are larger than the traditional estimates. In addition the low Q Bragg intensities from a sample of MCM-41-S15 porous silica under different dry and wet conditions and with different hydrogen isotopes are simulated using a simple model of the water and silica density profile across the pore. It is found the best agreement of these intensities with experimental data is shown by assuming the much larger pore diameter of 25 Å (radius 12.5 Å). Qualitative agreement is found between these simulated density profiles and those found in recent empirical potential structure refinement simulations of the same data, even though the latter data did not specifically include the Bragg peaks in the structure refinement. It is shown that the change in the (100) peak intensity on cooling from 300 to 210 K, which previously has been ascribed to a change in density of the confined water on cooling, can equally be ascribed to a change in density profile at constant average density. It is further pointed out that, independent of whether the pore diameter really is as large as 25 Å or whether a significant amount of water is absorbed outside the pore, the earlier reports of a dynamic crossover in supercooled confined water could in fact be a crystallization transition in the larger pore or surface water.

Quasi-elastic neutron scattering studies of the slow dynamics of supercooled and glassy aspirin

Aspirin, also known as acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), is not only a wonderful drug, but also a good glass former. Therefore, it serves as an important molecular system to study the near-arrest and arrested phenomena. In this paper, a high-resolution quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS) technique is used to investigate the slow dynamics of supercooled liquid and glassy aspirin from 410 down to 350 K. The measured QENS spectra can be analyzed with a stretched exponential model. We find that (i) the stretched exponent β(Q) is independent of the wavevector transfer Q in the measured Q range and (ii) the structural relaxation time τ(Q) follows a power-law dependence on Q. Consequently, the Q-independent structural relaxation time τ(0) can be extracted for each temperature to characterize the slow dynamics of aspirin. The temperature dependence of τ(0) can be fitted with the mode-coupling power law, the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann equation and a universal equation for fragile glass forming liquids recently proposed by Tokuyama in the measured temperature range. The calculated dynamic response function χ(T)(Q, t) using the experimentally determined self-intermediate scattering function of the hydrogen atoms of aspirin shows direct evidence of the enhanced dynamic fluctuations as the aspirin is increasingly supercooled, in agreement with the fixed-time mean squared displacement ⟨x(2)⟩ and the non-Gaussian parameter α(2) extracted from the elastic scattering.

Structure of supercooled water in clusters and bulk and its relation to the two-state picture of water: results from the TIP4P-ice model

The structure of water clusters (H(2)O)(n) (n = 40-200) and bulk water were examined by molecular dynamics simulations using the TIP4P-ice water model. The analysis of the low-temperature structures in terms of the local structure index (LSI) showed a bimodal distribution. This finding supports the two-state picture derived from the analysis of the inherent dynamics of bulk SPC/E water. The water molecules at the outer interface of the coldest clusters are more structured than those in the inner core. The geometrical constraint of the interface forces the surface molecules to lose one neighbor and adopt a local angular distribution of hydrogen bonds resembling that found in the basal plane of ice Ih.

Glassy relaxation and excess wing in mode-coupling theory: the dynamic susceptibility of propylene carbonate above and below T(c)

We explore the possibility of describing experimental susceptibility spectra of the glass former propylene carbonate with a two-component schematic model of mode-coupling theory (MCT) from above the melting point down to temperatures far below the critical temperature of MCT. By introducing a phenomenological time-dependent hopping rate, the spectra are reproduced in the full frequency and temperature range available. Literature data of dielectric susceptibilities and depolarized Brillouin light-scattering spectra are combined with our measurements of photon correlation spectroscopy to cover up to 18 decades in frequency of spectra for two different dynamical variables. A consistent description of all data sets is obtained by adjusting only a few physically motivated parameters. In particular the excess wing or slow β-relaxation commonly observed in the susceptibility spectra can consistently be modeled as originating from a coupling of the individual experimental probe correlator to the collective density fluctuations.

Density hysteresis of heavy water confined in a nanoporous silica matrix

A neutron scattering technique was developed to measure the density of heavy water confined in a nanoporous silica matrix in a temperature-pressure range, from 300 to 130 K and from 1 to 2,900 bars, where bulk water will crystalize. We observed a prominent hysteresis phenomenon in the measured density profiles between warming and cooling scans above 1,000 bars. We interpret this hysteresis phenomenon as support (although not a proof) of the hypothetical existence of a first-order liquid-liquid phase transition of water that would exist in the macroscopic system if crystallization could be avoided in the relevant phase region. Moreover, the density data we obtained for the confined heavy water under these conditions are valuable to large communities in biology and earth and planetary sciences interested in phenomena in which nanometer-sized water layers are involved.