Structure, dynamic disordered materials

Recently, the PDF method was extended to describe the local dynamics of disordered materials (Dmowski W, Vakhrushev SB, Jeong I-K, Hehlen M, Trouw F, Egami T (2006) Abstracts American conference on neutron scattering, St. Charles, IL, 18-22 June 2006, unpublished). The total PDF is obtained by the powder diffraction method so that S(Q) includes both elastic and inelastic intensities. To determine the dynamics we have to use an inelastic neutron scattering spectrometer and measure the dynamic structure factor, S(Q,a>), over a large Q and co space, and Fourier-transform along Q to obtain the dynamic PDF (DPDF). While the interpretation of the DPDF is a little... 

This chapter concentrates on the results of DS study of the structure, dynamics, and macroscopic behavior of complex materials. First, we present an introduction to the basic concepts of dielectric polarization in static and time-dependent fields, before the dielectric spectroscopy technique itself is reviewed for both frequency and time domains. This part has three sections, namely, broadband dielectric spectroscopy, time-domain dielectric spectroscopy, and a section where different aspects of data treatment and fitting routines are discussed in detail. Then, some examples of dielectric responses observed in various disordered materials are presented. Finally, we will consider the experimental evidence of non-Debye dielectric responses in several complex disordered systems such as microemulsions, porous glasses, porous silicon, H-bonding liquids, aqueous solutions of polymers, and composite materials. 

Glasses and polymer electrolytes are in a certain sense not solid electrolytes but neither are they considered as liquid ones. A glass can be regarded as a supercooled liquid and solvent-free polymer electrolytes are good conductors only above their glass transition temperature (7 ), where the structural disorder is dynamic as well as static. These materials appear macroscopically as solids because of their very high viscosity. A conductivity relation of the Vogel-Tamman-Fulcher (VTF) type is usually... 

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)—Unlike other structural techniques, such as powder and single-crystal x-ray and neutron diffraction, which characterize the "long-range" order, giving an average view of a structure, solid-state NMR probes the local environment of a particular nucleus and, therefore, is highly suited to study amorphous or disordered materials, such as modified LDH. An extensive review of NMR studies related to both the structure and dynamics in LDH materials was reported by Rocha [11]. Herein, we concentrate on site-specific information available from the H and Al solid-state NMR. 

The TLS degrees of freedom reflect the simplest approach to characterizing the complex energy landscape of disordered materials such as glasses and polymers. These materials are never in true thermodynamic equilibrium, and, hence, there are always some structural dynamics covering an extremely... 

The phenomena described in this chapter centered on interfacial disorder, sometimes liquid like disorder, of both a thermodynamic and dynamic origin, and the redistribution of both the disordered material and impurities at solid-liquid interfaces. Because of the change in the surface structure created by both surface roughening and surface melting, they have a profound influence on the local attachment kinetics, and ultimately on pattern formation in ice crystals. We have a clear picture of several issues, namely (i) that roughening is a crucial aspect of growth anisotropy, and (ii) that inter-facially melted water at subfreezing interfaces is mobile and responds in a thermodynamically consistent and predictable manner. Less clear however are a number of other issues as discussed below. 

Some of the major areas of activity in this field have been the application of the method to more complex materials, molecular dynamics, [28] and the treatment of excited states. [29] We will deal with some of the new materials in the next section. Two major goals of the molecular dynamics calculations are to determine crystal structures from first principles and to include finite temperature effects. By combining molecular dynamics techniques and ah initio pseudopotentials within the local density approximation, it becomes possible to consider complex, large, and disordered solids. 

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