Physical basis of fragility

Fragility of glass-forming liquids in the supercooled region is considered in the context of a defect diffusion theory. It is shown that a necessary condition that a liquid be "fragile" is that there is an attractive interaction between the mobile defects, i.e., that the defects cluster with falling temperature. The relationship between the model parameters and a widely used fragility index is described. Each of the model parameters provides a contribution to and insight into the fragility value. The behavior of exceptional cases, such as orientationally disordered crystals and aliphatic monohydric alcohols, is also naturally accounted for in terms of the model. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.