Current Affairs

Issue

A team of scientists have discovered a new state of matter called Liquid Glass, hidden inside mysterious transformations that happen between liquid and solid states of glass.

 

Details

• Suspensions of colloidal particles are widely spread in nature and technology and have been studied intensely over more than a century.

• When the density of such suspensions is increased to high volume fractions, often their structural dynamics are arrested in a disordered, glassy state before they can form an ordered structure.

• The scientists, focused on ellipsoidal polymethylmethacrylate colloids, which gives rise to entirely new and previously unstudied kinds of complex behaviours.

• Researchers recorded temporal development of the 3D positions and orientations for nearly 6,000 ellipsoidal particles using confocal laser scanning microscopy.

• Liquid glass is a result of clusters mutually obstructing each other and mediating characteristic long-range spatial correlations.

• The results further suggest that similar dynamics may be at work in other glass-forming systems.