About the Nature of the Structural Glass Transition: An Experimental Approach

The nature of the glassy state and of the glass transition of structural glasses is still a matter of debate. This debate stems predominantly from the kinetic features of the thermal glass transition. However the glass transition has at least two faces: the kinetic one which becomes apparent in the regime of low relaxation frequencies and a static one observed in static or frequency-clamped linear and non-linear susceptibilities. New results concerning the so-called α-relaxation process show that the historical view of an unavoidable cross-over of this relaxation time with the experimental time scale is probably wrong and support instead the existence of an intrinsic glass transition. In order to prove this, three different experimental strategies have been applied: studying the glass transition at extremely long time scales, the investigation of properties which are not sensitive to the kinetics of the glass transition and studying glass transitions which do not depend at all on a forced external time scale.