Bending thinnest glass shows atoms "dance"
16 Oct 2013
Researchers from Cornell and the University of Ulm have used an electron microscope to show what happens when a one-molecule thick piece of glass is bent, deformed and melted.
These are the things that happen before glass shatters, and for the first time, the researchers have directly imaged such deformations and the resulting “dance” of rearranging atoms in silica glass.
“Instead of just looking at the structure, we are looking at its dynamics
Graduate student Pinshane Huang
Graduate research student Pinshane Huang said: “Now, instead of just looking at the structure [of glass], we are looking at its dynamics and how it bends and breaks.
“This thinnest-ever glass gives us a new way of looking at glasses at the single-atom level, and how they break atom by atom,” Huang added.
With collaborators at both Cornell and Germany’s University of Ulm, the researchers imaged the thin glass with two types of transmission electron microscopes.
The electron beam heats up the glass, causing structural deformation at the interfaces between the liquid and solid phases.
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, Cornell Center for Materials Research and Air Force Office of Science Research.
