# Kinetics of the glass transition of fragile soft colloidal suspensions

Source: [Kinetics of the glass transition of fragile soft colloidal suspensions](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa32d01e209131ce88b2cc>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-24T19:43:22.549Z

Authors: Debasish Saha, Yogesh M. Joshi, Ranjini Bandyopadhyay

Published: 2015-06-09T15:55:52.000Z

## Abstract

Microscopic relaxation timescales are estimated from the autocorrelation functions obtained by dynamic light scattering experiments for Laponite suspensions with different concentrations ($C\_{L}$), added salt concentrations ($C\_{S}$) and temperatures ($T$). It has been shown in an earlier work \[Soft Matter, 10, 3292-3300 (2014)\] that the evolutions of relaxation timescales of colloidal glasses can be compared with molecular glass formers by mapping the waiting time ($t\_{w}$) of the former with the inverse of thermodynamic temperature ($1/T$) of the latter. In this work, the fragility parameter $D$, which signifies the deviation from Arrhenius behavior, is obtained from fits to the time evolutions of the structural relaxation timescales. For the Laponite suspensions studied in this work, $D$ is seen to be independent of $C\_{L}$ and $C\_{S}$, but is weakly dependent on $T$. Interestingly, the behavior of $D$ corroborates the behavior of fragility in molecular glass formers with respect to equivalent variables. Furthermore, the stretching exponent $\\beta$, which quantifies the width $w$ of the spectrum of structural relaxation timescales is seen to depend on $t\_{w}$. A hypothetical Kauzmann time $t\_{k}$, analogous to the Kauzmann temperature for molecular glasses, is defined as the timescale at which $w$ diverges. Corresponding to the Vogel temperature defined for molecular glasses, a hypothetical Vogel time $t^{\\infty}\_{\\alpha}$ is also defined as the time at which the structural relaxation time diverges. Interestingly, a correlation is observed between $t\_{k}$ and $t^{\\infty}\_{\\alpha}$, which is remarkably similar to that known for fragile molecular glass formers. A coupling model that accounts for the $t\_{w}$-dependence of the stretching exponent is used to analyse and explain the observed correlation between $t\_{k}$ and $t^{\\infty}\_{\\alpha}$.

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## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.02971>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.02971.pdf>)