title: Observation of the disorder-induced crystal-to-glass transition.
abstract: The role of frustration and quenched disorder in driving the transformation of a crystal into a glass is investigated in quasi-two-dimensional binary colloidal suspensions. Frustration is induced by added smaller particles. The crystal-glass transition is measured to differ from the liquid-glass transition in quantitative and qualitative ways. The crystal-glass transition bears structural signatures similar to those of the crystal-fluid transition: at the transition point, the persistence of orientational order decreases sharply from quasilong range to short range, and the orientational order susceptibility exhibits a maximum. The crystal-glass transition also features a sharp variation in particle dynamics: at the transition point, dynamic heterogeneity grows rapidly, and a dynamic correlation length scale increases abruptly.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Yunker
authors.forename: Zexin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: A G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Yodh