Stability in Glasses: New Materials and New Insights
IRG 1 Leaders:
Paul Voyles
223 MSE Building
1509 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53706
608-265-6740
voyles@engr.wisc.edu
Mark Ediger
7303A Chemistry Building
1101 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53706
608-262-7273
ediger@chem.wisc.edu
More group members
Glasses are ubiquitous across materials types and technological applications but their structure – property – processing relationships and underlying fundamental physics remain poorly understood. IRG 1 uses cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques from organic and inorganic glasses to address fundamental problems in glass science through the lens of stability. Glasses of the same composition can be created in states of widely varying thermodynamic and kinetic stability. The IRG seeks to use these materials to develop fundamental stability-structure-property relationships for glasses. Efforts include establishing control over stability in organic and inorganic glasses; understanding the structures associated with varying states of stability ; discovering the molecular nature of polyamorphism – the existence of two stable liquid states of the same substance; and determining the relationship between the structure and dynamics of liquids as they cool into the glassy state. The IRG integrates theory, simulations, and experiments to expand the range of ultrastable glassy materials and to enable new applications in areas as diverse as hard coatings and quantum information.
IRG 1 Highlights
(2025) Geometrically Accurate Coarse-Graining with AniSOAP
Wisconsin MRSEC researchers have developed a coarse-graining technique called AniSOAP (for anisotropic smooth overlap of atomic potentials) that gives the beads shapes that reflect the shape of the molecules they represent. This simple idea – carefully implemented to be mathematically rigorous and account for how molecules typically interact – can used for high-accuracy coarse grained simulations or to understand materials behavior that depends on molecular shape or orientation. AniSOAP is also particularly useful for machine learning analysis of molecular behavior using simple, physically-interpretable algorithms, producing new insight for researchers.
October 13, 2025
(2025) A Nanoscale View of Molecule Alignment in an Organic Semiconductor
Wisconsin MRSEC researchers have developed a new way to see how molecules fit together with an electron microscope. They used the method to see how molecules rearrange when an organic semiconductor is heated. A modest change in temperature creates significantly improved molecular alignment. The improved alignment is reflected in both larger aligned regions and straighter lines of molecules inside each region.
October 7, 2025
(2024) Control of Glass Structure and Properties with Soft Substrates
Physical vapor deposition (PVD) canproduce glassthinfilmswith preferred orientation to the molecules andhigherdensitythan ordinaryliquid-quenchedglass bytakingadvantageofthefastmovementoforiented moleculesonthe glasssurface. Research supported by Wisconsin MRSEC have found a new way to control the structure and properties of these films by growing them on soft substrates. PVD on a soft substrate can produce glass thin films that are much more dense and stable than those deposited on rigid substrates. A film deposited on a soft substrate in 2 hours is equivalent to a film deposited extremely slowly on rigid substrates over ~3000 years.
October 7, 2025
Hagopian Presents at Microscopy and Microanalysis Conference
The MSREC Honored Scholar Travel Award enabled Nicholas Hagopian to attend the 2024 Microscopy and Microanalysis conference held in Cleveland, Ohio. Hagopian, a PhD student in the Voyles group, conducts research on characterizing materials and …
October 30, 2024
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