The Crystallization of Disordered Materials under Shock Is Governed by Their Network Topology

Longwen Tang; Pratyush Srivastava; Vijay Gupta; Mathieu Bauchy

doi:10.1002/advs.202300131

The Crystallization of Disordered Materials under Shock Is Governed by Their Network Topology

Adv Sci (Weinh). 2023 Jul;10(20):e2300131. doi: 10.1002/advs.202300131. Epub 2023 Apr 28.

Authors

Longwen Tang¹, Pratyush Srivastava², Vijay Gupta², Mathieu Bauchy¹

Affiliations

¹ Physics of AmoRphous and Inorganic Solids Laboratory (PARISlab), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
² Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.

Abstract

When the shock load is applied, materials experience incredibly high temperature and pressure conditions on picosecond timescales, usually accompanied by remarkable physical or chemical phenomena. Understanding the underlying physics that governs the kinetics of shocked materials is of great importance for both physics and materials science. Here, combining experiment and large-scale molecular dynamics simulation, the ultrafast nanoscale crystal nucleation process in shocked soda-lime silicate glass is investigated. By adopting topological constraints theory, this study finds that the propensity of nucleation is governed by the connectivity of the atomic network. The densification of local networks, which appears once the crystal starts to grow, results in the underconstrained shell around the crystal and prevents further crystallization. These results shed light on the nanoscale crystallization mechanism of shocked materials from the viewpoint of topological constraint theory.

Keywords: crystallization; molecular dynamics simulation; shock; topological constraint theory.

Abstract

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