Static correlations functions and domain walls in glass-forming liquids: the case of a sandwich geometry.

The problem of measuring nontrivial static correlations in deeply supercooled liquids made recently some progress thanks to the introduction of amorphous boundary conditions, in which a set of free particles is subject to the effect of a different set of particles frozen into their (low temperature) equilibrium positions. In this way, one can study the crossover from nonergodic to ergodic phase, as the size of the free region grows and the effect of the confinement fades. Such crossover defines the so-called point-to-set correlation length, which has been measured in a spherical geometry, or cavity.

Dynamic relaxation of a liquid cavity under amorphous boundary conditions.

The growth of cooperatively rearranging regions was invoked long ago by Adam and Gibbs to explain the slowing down of glass-forming liquids. The lack of knowledge about the nature of the growing order, though, complicates the definition of an appropriate correlation function. One option is the point-to-set (PTS) correlation function, which measures the spatial span of the influence of amorphous boundary conditions on a confined system.

Temperature effect on the vibrational dynamics of cyclodextrin inclusion complexes: investigation by FTIR-ATR spectroscopy and numerical simulation.

The vibrational dynamics of solid inclusion complexes of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug Ibuprofen (IBP) with beta-cyclodextrin (beta-CD) and methyl-beta-cyclodextrin (Me-beta-CD) has been investigated by using attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared FTIR-ATR spectroscopy, in order to monitor the changes induced, as a consequence of complexation, on the vibrational spectrum of IBP, in the wavenumber range 600-4000 cm(-1). Quantum chemical calculations were performed on monomeric and dimeric structures of IBP, derived from symmetric hydrogen bonding of the two carboxylic groups, in order to unambiguously assign some characteristic IR bands in the IBP spectrum. The evolution in temperature from 250 to 340 K of the C horizontal lineO stretching vibration, described by a best-fit procedure, allowed us to extract the thermodynamic parameter DeltaH associated to the binding of IBP with betaCDs in the solid phase.

Numerical determination of the exponents controlling the relationship between time, length, and temperature in glass-forming liquids.

There is a certain consensus that the very fast growth of the relaxation time tau occurring in glass-forming liquids on lowering the temperature must be due to the thermally activated rearrangement of correlated regions of growing size. Even though measuring the size of these regions has defied scientists for a while, there is indeed recent evidence of a growing correlation length xi in glass formers. If we use Arrhenius law and make the mild assumption that the free-energy barrier to rearrangement scales as some power psi of the size of the correlated regions, we obtain a relationship between time and length, T log tau approximately xi(psi).

Mosaic multistate scenario versus one-state description of supercooled liquids.

According to the mosaic scenario, relaxation in supercooled liquids is ruled by two competing mechanisms: surface tension, opposing the creation of local excitations, and entropy, providing the drive to the configurational rearrangement of a given region. We test this scenario through numerical simulations well below the Mode Coupling temperature. For an equilibrated configuration, we freeze all the particles outside a sphere and study the thermodynamics of this sphere.

Vibrational properties of inclusion complexes: the case of indomethacin-cyclodextrin.

Vibrational properties of inclusion complexes with cyclodextrins are studied by means of Raman spectroscopy and numerical simulation. In particular, Raman spectra of the nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory drug indomethacin undergo notable changes in the energy range between 1600 and 1700 cm(-1) when inclusion complexes with cyclodextrins are formed. By using both ab initio quantum chemical calculations and molecular dynamics, we studied how to relate such changes to the geometry of the inclusion process, disentangling single-molecule effects, from changes in the solid state structure or dimerization processes.