Among the superionic conductors that show a Faraday transition – the continuous increase in the ionic conductivity over a range of temperatures – the fluorite structures have enjoyed incisive examinations over the past four decades; yet the fundamental nature of superionicity has remained largely inconclusive. Departing from the traditional quasi-static defect framework, we provide weighty evidence for string-like dynamical structures that govern the fast ion conduction process in fluorites. We show that lower temperatures encourage the growth of longer but slowly relaxing strings and vice-versa – a direct manifestation of heterogeneous dynamics. Remarkably, the ionic conductivity is inversely correlated to the lifetime of the ions that participate in the strings and not explicitly to the ion population. Our analysis methodology, which resolves a long-standing disagreement on defect structures and the mechanism of ionic transport in fcc fluorite structures, is well-positioned to describe the dynamics of low dimensional conduction in a larger class of superionic conductors.

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In an earlier work [V. A. Annamareddy et al., Phys. Rev. E 89, 010301(R) (2014)], we showed the manifestation of dynamical heterogeneity (DH)—the presence of clustered mobile and immobile regions—in UO2, a model type II superionic conductor. In the current work, we demonstrate the mechanism of dynamic facilitation (DF) in two superionic conductors (CaF2 and UO2) using atomistic simulations. Using the mobility transfer function, DF is shown to vary non-monotonically with temperature with the intensity of DF peaking at temperatures close to the superionic transition temperature (Tλ). Both the metrics quantifying DH and DF show remarkable correspondence implying that DF, in the framework of kinematically constrained models, underpins the heterogeneous dynamics in type II superionic conductors.

The dynamics near the surface of glasses can be much faster than in the bulk. We studied the surface dynamics of a Pt-based metallic glass using electron correlation microscopy with sub-nanometer resolution. Our studies show an ∼20 K suppression of the glass transition temperature at the surface. The enhancement in surface dynamics is suppressed by coating the metallic glass with a thin layer of amorphous carbon. Parallel molecular dynamics simulations on Ni 80 P 20 show a similar temperature suppression of the surface glass transition temperature and that the enhanced surface dynamics are arrested by a capping layer that chemically binds to the glass surface. Mobility in the near-surface region occurs via atomic caging and hopping, with a strong correlation between slow dynamics and high cage-breaking barriers and stringlike cooperative motion. Surface and bulk dynamics collapse together as a function of temperature rescaled by their respective glass transition temperatures.

The bulk and surface dynamics of Cu50Zr50 metallic glass were studied using classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. As the alloy undergoes cooling, it passes through liquid, supercooled, and glassy states. While bulk dynamics showed a marked slowing down prior to glass formation, with increasing activation energy, the slowdown in surface dynamics was relatively subtle. The surface exhibited a lower glass transition temperature than the bulk, and the dynamics preceding the transition were accurately described by a temperature-independent activation energy. Surface dynamics were much faster than bulk at a given temperature in the supercooled state, but surface and bulk dynamics were found to be very similar when compared at their respective glass transition temperatures. The manifestation of dynamical heterogeneity, as characterized by the non-Gaussian parameter and breakdown of the Stokes-Einstein equation, was also similar between bulk and surface for temperatures scaled by their respective glass transition temperatures. Individual atom motion was dominated by a cage and jump mechanism in the glassy state for both the bulk and surface. We utilize this cage and jump mechanisms to separate the activation energy for diffusion into two parts: (i) cage-breaking barrier (Q1), associated with the rearrangement of neighboring atoms to free up space and (ii) the subsequent jump barrier (Q2). It was observed that Q1 dominates Q2 for both bulk and surface diffusion, and the difference in activation energies for bulk and surface diffusion mainly arose from the differences in cage-breaking barrier Q1.