Cooperative strings and glassy dynamics in various confined geometries

Maxence Arutkin, Elie Raphaël, James Forrest, Thomas Salez

Published 2019-11-27Version 1

Previously, we developed a minimal model based on random cooperative strings for the relaxation of supercooled liquids in the bulk and near free interfaces, and we recovered some key experimental observations. In this article, after recalling the main ingredients of the cooperative string model, we study the effective glass transition and surface mobility of various experimentally-relevant confined geometries: freestanding films, supported films, spherical particles, and cylindrical particles, with free interfaces and/or passive substrates. Finally, we introduce a novel way to account for a purely attractive substrate, and explore the impact of the latter in the previous geometries.