Energy Landscape, Antiplasticization, and Polydispersity Induced Crossover of Heterogeneity in Supercooled Polydisperse Liquids

Abstract

Polydispersity is found to have a significant effect on the potential energy landscape; the average inherent structure energy decreases with polydispersity. Increasing polydispersity at a fixed volume fraction decreases the glass transition temperature and the fragility of glass formation analogous to the antiplasticization seen in some polymeric melts. An interesting temperature dependent crossover of heterogeneity with polydispersity is observed at low temperature due to the faster buildup of dynamic heterogeneity at lower polydispersity. © 2008 The American Physical Society.