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Updated: Oct 28, 2025

Cooling Rate Dependent Ellipsometry Measurements to Determine the Dynamics of Thin Glassy Films
Published on: January 26, 2016
Theory of structural relaxation in glass from the thermodynamics of irreversible processes
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
Abstract:
This work proposes a fundamental thermodynamic description of structural relaxation in glasses by establishing a link between the Prony series solution to volume relaxation derived from the principles of irreversible thermodynamics and asymmetric Lévy stable distribution of relaxation rates. Additionally, it is shown that the bulk viscosity of glass, and not the shear viscosity, is the transport coefficient governing structural relaxation. We also report the distribution of relaxation times and energy barrier heights underpinning stretched exponential relaxation. It is proposed that this framework may be used for qualitative and quantitative descriptions of the relaxation kinetics in glass.
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