Aging of glasses: to be or not to be like a liquid
Name of applicant
Kristine Niss
Title
Professor
Institution
Roskilde University
Amount
DKK 12,999,999
Year
2025
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accomplish
What?
Glass is, popularly speaking, a liquid that has stopped flowing – yet, the atoms have not completely stopped moving. They still make very slow rearrangements that lead to changes of the glass’ properties over time. The question is whether these movements, called physical aging, are like the movements in a liquid – just extremely slow, or if atoms in a glass move through different routes.
Why?
In this context "glasses" includes all types of non-crystalline solids, e.g. polymers and metallic glasses. We lack theoretical understanding of glasses and particularly of physical aging. This project will establish a new foundation for how to view glasses and lay the grounds for a theory of aging. This will lead to improved control of aging in non-crystalline materials used in applications.
How?
We will develop and perform two new types of aging experiments which I have designed to gain access to very long time scales. The experiments are targeted specifically at clarifying whether glasses are "just" very slow liquids. The experiments will be performed on polymeric, metallic, molecular, and computer-model glasses in a uniquely extensive study of aging across different types of glasses.