A structural study and its relation to dynamics heterogeneity in a polymer glass former

BALBUENA, CRISTIAN; MELISA GIANETTI; EZEQUIEL R. SOULÉ

SOFT MATTER

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY

Lugar: CAMBRIDGE; Año: 2021 vol. 17 p. 3503 - 3512

1744-683X

The relationship between structure and dynamical behavior (super-Arrhenius temperature dependence of relaxation time accompanied by heterogeneous dynamics) in glassy materials remains an open issue in the physics of condensed matter. The question whether this dynamic phenomena have a thermodynamic origin or not still remains unanswered. In this work we analyze several dynamic and structural parameters in a polymer glass-former by means of Molecular Dynamic simulations. The results obtained in this work indicate that structure does affect dynamic behavior, where the structural conditioning becomes noticeable below the temperature at which the non-Arrhenius behavior manifests, increasing as the system approaches the glass transition temperature. Moreover, we observed that the short-range order parameters are related to local dynamics at single-particle level. This results reinforce the idea of a connection between structure and dynamics and that could be indicate a thermodynamic nature of glass transition