Revealing Structural Changes at Glass Transition via Radial Distribution Functions

Transformation of glasses into liquids is discussed in terms of configuron (broken chemical bond or transformation of an atom from one to another atomic shell) percolation theory with structural changes caused. The first sharp diffraction minimum (FSDM) in the pair distribution function (PDF) is shown to contain information on structural changes in amorphous materials at the glass transition temperature (T-g). A method to determine the glass transition temperature is proposed based on allocating T-g to the temperature when a sharp kink in FSDM occurs. The method proposed is more sensitive compared with empirical criterion of Wendt-Abraham; e.g., for amorphous Ni the kink that determines T-g is almost twice sharper. Connection between the kink in fictive temperature behavior of PDF and Wendt-Abraham criterion is discussed.