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Science 5 April 2002:
Vol. 296. no. 5565, pp. 104 - 106
DOI: 10.1126/science.1068238
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Reports

Multiple Glassy States in a Simple Model System

K. N. Pham,1 A. M. Puertas,12 J. Bergenholtz,3 S. U. Egelhaaf,1 A. Moussaïd,1 P. N. Pusey,1 A. B. Schofield,1 M. E. Cates,1 M. Fuchs,1 W. C. K. Poon1*

Experiments, theory, and simulation were used to study glass formation in a simple model system composed of hard spheres with short-range attraction ("sticky hard spheres"). The experiments, using well-characterized colloids, revealed a reentrant glass transition line. Mode-coupling theory calculations and molecular dynamics simulations suggest that the reentrance is due to the existence of two qualitatively different glassy states: one dominated by repulsion (with structural arrest due to caging) and the other by attraction (with structural arrest due to bonding). This picture is consistent with a study of the particle dynamics in the colloid using dynamic light scattering.

1 Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK.
2 Department of Applied Physics, University of Almería, 04.120 Almería, Spain.
3 Department of Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, Göteborg University, S-41296 Göteborg, Sweden.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: w.poon{at}ed.ac.uk

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