Atomic Structural Origin of Fictive Temperature Revealed by AZnP₃O₉ (A=K, Rb) Glasses

Abstract

The fictive temperature (Tf) is widely applied to understand the relaxation thermodynamics of a glass; however, its atomic structural origin is still unclear. Here, we report two novel AZnP3O9 glasses obtained by melting the composition identical single crystals. These glasses exhibit structural inheritance within 5 Å from the single crystal counterparts that is quantified by δ=nglass/ncry (0≤δ≤1, n is the number of pair correlation functions). Among the available glass‐formers, glassKZnP3O9 exhibits the highest structural inheritance (δ=1, nglass=8). More insightfully, a reverse correlation between δ and the relaxation thermodynamic parameters is observed in glassAZnP3O9, revealing for the first time the atomic structural origin of fictive temperature.

Predicting spectroscopic properties of quaternary phosphate laser glasses

“…Although glass lacks a long-range ordered structure and is structurally different from crystal, its local geometry, the forces around each cation, and the distribution of cations around each network oxygen are similar in both the glassy and crystalline states, which has been further verified by the vibrational spectra of metaphosphate glasses and their crystalline analogs. 29,30 Hence, the structures of glassy C and F are reasonable to be considered as a superposition of the various chemical groups similar to the ones that exist in…”