Characterization of Structure and Dynamics of Metallic and Organic Glasses Using Electron Microscopy

Download or read book Characterization of Structure and Dynamics of Metallic and Organic Glasses Using Electron Microscopy written by Debaditya Chatterjee and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glassy states are commonly observed across metallic, organic, and ceramic materials. They exhibit unique mechanical, thermal, and electronic properties. Metallic glasses are stronger than regular metals while being as pliable as plastics, but their wide-spread technological adoption is hindered by our poor understanding of their atomic ordering. Organic glasses have applications ranging from electronics to pharmaceuticals. Glasses lack long-range order, and their properties are mediated by nano-scale ordering. Experimental characterization of glassy structures is incredibly challenging due to the awesome complexity of their nanostructures and a lack of characterization techniques that can probe the local ordering and structural relaxation processes with nanometer-scale spatial resolution. Characterization techniques based on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) probe the structure and dynamics of such systems with nanometer-scale spatial resolution. Structural studies on metallic and organic glasses using 4-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy (4D STEM) reveal varying length scales of ordering in these systems and their impact on physical properties, at unprecedented spatial resolution. Electron correlation microscopy (ECM) analysis on time-resolved in situ thermal annealed TEM data lets us study glassy dynamics and reveals spatially heterogeneous dynamics in the bulk and at the surface of metallic glass nanowires. The techniques developed, and the mechanisms of structural ordering and relaxation dynamics revealed in these investigations, have implications on the synthesis, processing, and characterization of glassy systems with controlled thermal, electronic and mechanical properties, including growth of ultrastable metallic glass phases and molecular glasses with tunable structural anisotropy for organic electronics applications, fabrication of glassy nanostructures by superplastic forming, and control of surface crystallization.