title: Relaxation kinetics of nanoscale indents in a polymer glass.
abstract: Nanometer scale indents have been written in a cross-linked polystyrene sample, and their relaxation has been studied at annealing temperatures well below the glass transition of the polymer. The indents represent a highly nonequilibrium state of the polymer which is subjected to mechanical stress of up to 0.4 GPa and thermal quench rates on the order of 10{8} K/s during writing. It is shown that the relaxation towards equilibrium evolves logarithmically over more than 10 orders of magnitude in time. The relaxation kinetics are accurately described in terms of a thermally activated process with an energy barrier whose magnitude decreases linearly with the distance from equilibrium.
authors.affiliation: IBM Research, Zurich Research Laboratory, 8803 Rüschlikon, Switzerland.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Knoll
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wiesmann
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gotsmann
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Duerig