Relaxation of a metallic glass to the metastable equilibrium: Evidence for the existence of the Kauzmann pseudocritical temperature

摘要

High-precision isothermal measurements on strongly preannealed metallic glass reveal a decrease of the shear modulus to the metastable equilibrium value both in the glassy state far below the glass transition and in the supercooled liquid state near T_g. The results obtained point out the existence of a low-temperature limit for the supercooled liquid, which is known as the Kauzmann pseudocritical temperature [W. Kauzmann, Chem. Rev. 43, 219 (1948)]. This finding experimentally questions the existence of the "Kauzmann paradox," which is widely discussed in the literature.