2015/07/16 by Д. В. Денисов, Denisov, D. V., Dang, M. T. +8
Chemical Engineering · Materials Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #Material Dynamics and Properties #Rheology and Fluid Dynamics Studies #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1507.04679
openalex publication_date 2015/07/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Glasses acquire their solid-like properties by cooling from the supercooled liquid via a continuous transition known as the glass transition. Recent research on soft glasses indicates that besides temperature, another route to liquify glasses is by application of stress that forces relaxation and flow. Here we provide experimental evidence that the stress-induced onset of flow of glasses occurs via a sharp first order-like transition. Using simultaneous x-ray scattering during the oscillatory rheology of a colloidal glass, we identify a sharp symmetry change from anisotropic solid to isotropic liquid structure at the transition from the linear to the nonlinear regime. Concomitantly, intensity fluctuations sharply acquire liquid distributions. These observations identify the yielding of glasses to increasing stress as sharp affine-to-nonaffine transition, providing a new conceptual paradigm of the yielding of this technologically important class of materials, and offering new perspectives on the glass transition.