A structural study and its relation to dynamic heterogeneity in a polymer glass former

Abstract

The relationship between structure and dynamical behavior (super-Arrhenius temperature dependence of relaxation time accompanied by heterogeneous dynamics) in glassy materials remains an open issue in the physics of condensed matter. The question of whether this dynamic phenomena have a thermodynamic origin or not still remains unanswered. In this work we analyze several dynamic and structural parameters in a polymer glass-former by means of molecular dynamics simulations. The results obtained in this work indicate that the structure does affect dynamic behavior, whereas structural conditioning becomes noticeable below the temperature at which the non-Arrhenius behavior manifests and increases as the system approaches the glass transition temperature. Moreover, we observed that the short-range order parameters are related to local dynamics at the single-particle level. These results reinforce the idea of a connection between the structure and dynamics and that could indicate the thermodynamic nature of glass transition.