Shear viscosity of glass-forming melts in the liquid-glass transition region

A new approach to interpreting the hole-activation model of a viscous flow of glass-forming liquids is proposed. This model underlies the development of the concept on the exponential temperature dependence of the free energy of activation of a flow within the range of the liquid-glass transition in complete agreement with available experimental data. The “formation of a fluctuation hole” in high-heat glass-forming melts is considered as a small-scale low-activation local deformation of a structural network, i.e., the quasi-lattice necessary for the switching of the valence bond, which is the main elementary event of viscous flow of glasses and their melts. In this sense, the hole formation is a conditioned process. A drastic increase in the activation free energy of viscous flow in the liquid-glass transition region is explained by a structural transformation that is reduced to a limiting local elastic deformation of the structural network, which, in turn, originates from the excitation (critical displacement) of a bridging atom like the oxygen atom in the Si-O-Si bridge. At elevated temperatures, as a rule, a necessary amount of excited bridging atoms (locally deformed regions of the structural network) always exists, and the activation free energy of viscous flow is almost independent of temperature. The hole-activation model is closely connected with a number of well-known models describing the viscous flow of glass-forming liquids (the Avramov-Milchev, Nemilov, Ojovan, and other models).