X-ray Diffraction Study on Simple Molecular Glasses Created by Low-Temperature Vapor Deposition

The structure of simple molecular glasses has been one of the central issues in the research of glasses. We tried to form the glasses of carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and nitrogen (N2) molecules by slow vapor deposition at 3 K (deposition rate: ca. 10 nm/h). Glassy CO2 was successfully obtained and it crystallized on heating at 25 K, which is lower than the hypothetical glass transition temperature of CO2. The CO2 glass is the simplest molecular glass ever created. The X-ray diffraction patterns and derived pair distribution functions revealed that the glassy CO2 has a structure in which the intermolecular distance is shorter and the intermolecular correlation is much stronger than those of liquid CO2. Orientational glasses, which are positionally ordered and orientationally disordered, of CO and N2 were obtained and they were gradually ordered as the annealing temperature is increased.