Thermal glass transition beyond kinetics of a non-crystallizable glass-former.

A long-debated problem related to glass formation in amorphous materials is the interplay of thermodynamic, kinetic and α-relaxation processes. For the first time, low-frequency dynamics, as well as kinetic or quasi-static thermal expansion coefficients of a non-crystallizable glass-former are simultaneously measured. Based on the feedback between low-frequency dynamics and morphology, the study supports the viewpoint that glass formation can be observed in internal equilibrium, i.e. beyond kinetics, and might stem from spontaneous local-scale morphological changes.